KATO Saburo
Born: 29 December 1875 – Died: 22 December 1944
Particulars:
Saburo was born in Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. He arrived in Australia in 1901 when he was 25 years old and lived in the Mackay region, Queensland for 40 years as a sugar cane farmer. When the Pacific War broke out, he was a single man, who was farming by leasing five acres of land and held shares in a sugar milling co-op. When he was captured, his assets included 100 pounds worth of sugar cane crop, an estimated 40 pounds worth of farming equipment, 10 pounds in a bank account, and some cash. He was taken to New South Wales to be interned at Hay Internment Camp, then transferred to Loveday Internment Camp in South Australia. He died of rectal cancer at age 69. His grave is in the Japanese Cemetery in Cowra, New South Wales, Australia.
–Mayu Kanamori
More info:
Nat Koyama
Artist/s Statement:
Saburo Kato worked on a sugar cane farm. I recently discovered that one of my original settler ancestors John Murray owned a sugar cane plantation that employed South Sea Islander labour. It felt like synchronicity that my in-laws recently visited Australia from Japan and paid their respects at his grave, where my mother’s name is also engraved. This culture of respect for ancestors is what seems to underlie this project, which contrasts with the cold bureaucratic language of the archival documents I found, and the system of surveillance which created them. But perhaps this oppressive power deteriorates with time.
There is an archival term – ‘inherent vice’ – referring to the tendency of material to deteriorate due to the essential instability or interaction among components. Thinking about my family history led me to modify this to ‘Inherited Vice’, which might be the start of a series of artworks based on white settler names.
Artist Bio:
Nat Koyama works as an archivist at the Queensland State Archives in Meanjin / Brisbane, Australia. He studied art at Queensland College of Art and Kyoto University of the Arts on the Japanese government MEXT scholarship.