Our emigrants: how a Kazakhstani moved to Japan and became a famous photographer

Hayato Matsumoto is a Japanese photographer of Kazakh origin. Matsumoto travels the world and shoots documentary photography projects. He talked about life in Kazakhstan, reunion with Japanese relatives and his work, reports “Present Tense".

Photo: IStock

He was born and raised in Almaty, served in the police in the 1990s, and in 2000 moved to Japan, where he now shoots himself and conducts tours for photographers,

Descendant of Cossacks and Samurai

In Matsumoto, many different bloodlines merged. Hayato's grandmother was a Trans-Baikal Cossack woman: she married a Japanese man in the early 1930s. Hayato's mother was born in 1938 in Manchuria, which was Japanese at the time. In 1945, Soviet troops entered there, the grandfather went to war, went missing, and the grandmother and children lived there until 1954.

After Stalin's death, relations between China and the Soviet Union deteriorated and all non-Chinese began to be evicted from Manchuria.

“At that time there were many Russians there who began to leave in all directions: to Canada, Australia. The grandmother and the children went to the Soviet Union,” says Hayato. “At that time, migrants were considered unreliable citizens, they were forbidden to settle in big cities, so our family was taken to the city of Krasnoarmeysk in northern Kazakhstan.”

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In the Hyato family, there was a taboo on the topic of Japanese origin: it was better not to talk about it to anyone, not to indicate it in any profiles. They were simply afraid, as Hayato says. “Even when we moved to the Union, they threw out almost everything and burned it, except for documents so that they would know who the father was and where they were born. Well, there are still a few family photos left,” he says.

In 1982, Hayato's uncle, who lived at that time in Kurgan (a Russian city in the Trans-Urals), was at an art exhibition where he met a group of Japanese tourists. The guide of the group approached the uncle and said that the tourists mistook him for a Japanese. He asked him to come up to them and explain that he was a Kazakh. But Uncle Hayato replied that he was actually Japanese. When they met and started talking, one of the tourists volunteered to help him find his relatives.

Returning to Japan, the tourist advertised on television and in newspapers and managed to find Hayato's grandfather, who was captured, survived and searched for his family in Manchuria for a long time. Then he was told that no one was left alive in Manchuria, that all the Japanese were shot. Hayato's grandmother and mother also searched for their grandfather, but the Soviet authorities replied that they had not found anyone. Hayato thinks that no one really was looking for anyone.

As soon as the grandfather found out that the family was alive, he came to the Soviet Union to see his relatives. Hayato did not see him then, because he was in the army. Grandfather offered his relatives to move to Japan, but the year was 1985, no one even thought about moving. Then the Union fell apart, the Japanese embassy appeared in Kazakhstan, and the Japanese government launched a program to help compatriots who ended up abroad. Under this program, the Hayato family flew to Japan every year at the expense of the Japanese government. Rested, met with relatives. Every vacation at that time, Hayato spent in Japan.

The idea to move to Japan came to Hayato permanently in the late 1990s.

“In Soviet times, I had a lot of problems with work and study, and when the Union collapsed, there was more freedom,” he recalls. – I got a job in the police, in the state investigative committee, where I worked until the end of the 1990s. My last position was head of the department for especially serious crimes. We were naive then, we really fought crime. When the state investigative committee was created, I moved there. I finished my service with the rank of captain, they should have given me a major, but I had an inflexible character, so the rank was always delayed, and I never received it.”

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“I remember when I first came to the authorities, we stood outside the department, smoked and talked. And then one employee passed by, about whom I was immediately warned: don’t communicate with this guy, he’s corrupt, he takes bribes. And he was the only one like that, can you imagine? - says Hayato. “The entire department pointed fingers at him. Now they probably won’t say that anymore, but I know that there are still those in the authorities who work honestly and do their duty. It was only later, closer to the 2000s, that it all began: nepotism and bribes. It became more and more difficult to work.”

On one of his visits to Japan, Uncle Hayato, a retired policeman, said that the police needed people who knew Russian.

“I was happy and told my wife that there was work in Japan, so I definitely needed to go. And when we arrived, it turned out that the police only accept people up to 29 years old, and I was already 35. At first I was shocked, of course,” Hayato admits. – I won’t say that we lived well in Kazakhstan, but there was still some kind of stability, salaries began to be paid on time, but here I was left with nothing. Moreover, our Soviet diplomas are not recognized in Japan.”

I had to go to work on milling and turning machines. Despite the fact that the Japanese government provided the emigrants with housing, money and health insurance, problems with integration still arose.

“At that time I had two sons, one went to school, the other to kindergarten, and we couldn’t even do homework with them - we didn’t understand,” recalls Hayato. – I won’t say that before moving I succeeded in learning the language, because at that time there were no courses or normal textbooks. But if you survived in Kazakhstan in the 90s, then you definitely won’t have problems in Japan.”

Japan through the eyes of a photographer

In Japan, Hayato was able to buy himself the SLR camera he had always dreamed of. He began taking pictures of his children and took pictures of landscapes at the same time.

Hayato created the PhotoArtCreation project - a large photo site in English, Russian and Japanese - with the aim of bringing together photographers from Asia, Japan, and Europe. But when Facebook appeared, he realized that the era of such sites was leaving, so Hayato sold his project and also moved to Facebook

But he shot his first project in Israel.

“I discovered a completely different world and was fascinated by the faces of this city,” he says. – There I met the bards Alexander and Svetlana Mendelev, who gave me their CD. One song, “Doves of Hope,” inspired me to do a photo project - portraits of girls who serve in the Israeli army. I wanted to show the tragedy of our time: beautiful young girls are forced to defend their homeland with machine guns.”

“I made a video from these photographs, put a song on the video and began showing my project in different cities and countries, including Kazakhstan. And viewers began to say that they perceived my photographs as a movie. At their suggestion, I began to call this project a photo film,” says the photographer.

Soon he came up with the idea of ​​organizing photo tours around Japan specifically for photographers - it was suggested by friends to whom Hayato was showing the country. They organized advertising through word of mouth, and soon tourists from all over the world began going on these tours.

“I have always been fascinated by the history of Japan, and I am interested in sharing my thoughts, considerations, and my view of Japan with others,” he says.

“The Japanese are writing to Putin to tell him to come to his senses”

Hayato is against the war that Russia unleashed in Ukraine. He speaks a lot on this topic.

“The topic of Ukraine has been painful for me since 2014. Then I told all my friends that this was just the beginning. In the 1945st century, territorial problems cannot be resolved through military intervention, he believes. – Japan also has disputes with Russia over the Kuril Islands, but Japan is categorically against a military solution to this problem. After XNUMX, Japan has been trying to regain these islands exclusively through diplomatic means.”

Japan is helping Ukrainian refugees, Hayato says, despite the lack of experience in this matter and even the absence of a refugee law.
But people still come to Japan as refugees, they are helped with housing and other domestic issues, according to Hayato.

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“Of the problems, of course, the language, besides, the majority of those who arrived are women and children. At the same time, women do not want to sit just like that, they want to work, do something, besides, they are not going to stay here forever, after the war they want to return to Ukraine,” he says.

“Most Japanese support Ukraine. Personally, I have not met Putin’s supporters, I only heard that they exist somewhere,” he says. – Even the Japanese didn’t care much about Crimea; in 2014, no one had even heard of Crimea. And now almost everyone knows about Ukraine, about the annexation of territories. Butch and the threat of nuclear weapons had a particularly strong impact on Japanese society. People brought me letters and asked me to translate them into Russian. They are naive, they write to Putin to come to his senses and stop scaring the world with nuclear weapons. Because nuclear weapons are a very sensitive topic for Japan. And in everyday conversations, the Japanese say: Putin probably doesn’t know history well if he repeats our mistakes.”

“I believe that Ukraine today is fighting not only for itself, but for everyone,” says Hayato. “I am one hundred percent sure that if Ukraine suddenly loses (and I only wish it victory), Kazakhstan will be next.”

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