MINAMI Seichiro
Born: 20 December 1912 – Died: 2 August 1943
Particulars:
Minami Seichiro was born in Wakayama Prefecture. He was a distant cousin of Pacific entrepreneur T Banno. At 20 years old, he moved to work as a clerk at Banno Bros in Tonga for seven years and in Auckland for a year. He married Maemizo Kiyomi in Japan in February 1941 and they settled back in Tonga. When Seichiro was arrested in Tonga at the start of the Pacific War, his father had died and his mother and a sister were still living in Japan. He and Kiyomi were interned separately in New Zealand – Seichiro on Matiu / Somes Island in Wellington Harbour and Kiyomi near Auckland. There, Kiyomi had her first baby, a boy Hiroshi in the winter of 1942. Seichiro probably would have seen his son for the first time when his family was reunited to be sent to Australia on the flight in August 1943, around Hiroshi’s first birthday. Tragically, the plane crashed soon after take-off. All three of the Minami family died in the crash.
–Sophie Constable
More info:
Sophie Constable
Artist/s Statement:
Minami Seichiro’s portrait is built through digital collage from archival documents, the remaining accessible traces of his life. I read a quote from Derrida at The University of Sydney’s Chau Chak Wing Museum that the trace is not a presence but is rather the simulacrum of a presence that dislocates, displaces, and refers beyond itself.
To relocate Seichiro from his largely unempathetic traces, I collected shearwater feathers from storm flotsam on a local beach. Shearwaters are Pacific birds that journey throughout their lives between Japan, Tonga, Aotearoa and Australia, just as Seichiro’s journeys did. I felt like Seiichiro’s wings had been cut through the storm of wartime internment. When a bird’s flight feathers are damaged, they can’t fly until a new one grows, pushing the damaged one out. However it’s possible to replace damaged feathers by imping an intact one shed from another bird. Inspired by the feathers crafted by Aimee Gruar at the amazing Pātaka Arts + Museum, I found some lace at a thrift shop to create new golden spirit flight feathers to help Seichiro fly again.
Artist Bio:
Sophie Constable is an artist, scientist, researcher, and educator at The Australian National University in Canberra.