This essay recounts an August 29, 2024 journey sparked by unexpected clear skies before a major typhoon. The author rushed to Onomichi, photographed Mihara—capturing 446 extraordinary images—and reflected on the town’s decline since Japan’s shipbuilding recession. A friend remarked that the photos “were themselves music.” Later that night, a piano piece the author had never heard began playing, astonishingly matching the photos’ atmosphere. Searching the composer on YouTube revealed a sense of uncanny artistic resonance between photography and music.

It matched the photographs so uncannily well that I searched the composer on YouTube.
2024/08/29

The following is also a rough draft.
A few years ago, a large typhoon accompanied by fierce winds struck Osaka directly.
The intense scenes of that time remain vivid in my memory.
A typhoon of similar scale is now projected to follow a course that could hit western Japan as early as tomorrow.

Yesterday, the weather turned out to be unexpectedly clear.
I immediately confirmed that Onomichi was sunny.
I stopped my work and jumped on the Shinkansen.
Since it takes only one hour to reach Fukuyama, I decided to bring a book.
Right before leaving, I changed it to Masahiro Miyazaki’s article from this month’s issue of WiLL.
Once on board, I first read the newspaper.
At the bottom section, an advertisement for WiLL was printed.
Among the articles listed was a piece by Masayuki Takayama.
I instantly thought, “I made a mistake,” and told my close friend.
My friend understood exactly what I meant—100%—and agreed.

Yesterday’s photographs were among the best I have ever taken in my entire photographic life.
Recently, when a taxi driver in Mihara asked me, “Is photography your hobby?” I replied, “No, it’s not a hobby. It’s a service—something for the readers of my blog. I attach the world’s finest photos to the world’s finest essays…” and so on.

Mihara, once one of the most prosperous cities in Hiroshima Prefecture and a beautiful town, has declined to the point of being almost unrecognizable since Japan fell into the shipbuilding recession.
(I will write more about this another day.)
When I got out of the taxi, I said, “My photographs might increase the number of people visiting Mihara from around the world,” and so on.

I returned home earlier than planned and imported the photographs to my PC.
446 images!
Every single one of them was magnificent.
They were my once-in-a-lifetime photographs.

“I envy my readers,” I joked. “When you count the Shinkansen fare and all the travel costs, these works have a pretty high production cost, yet they always get to see them for free.”

As I was about to work while listening to music, my close friend said, “For today’s photos, I don’t need music. The photographs themselves are music,” and headed home.

At night, as usual, I was working while listening to classical music when a piano piece I had never heard before began to play.
It matched the photographs so uncannily well that I searched the composer on YouTube.
I was astonished.
It was as if the performer and I were responding to one another.

2024/8/26 in Onomichi