UEDA Eijiro
Born: 25 June 1875 – Died: 18 November 1945
Particulars:
Eijiro was born in Wakayama Prefecture in Japan. He was a single man who had a brother in the Kaiso Gun area of Wakayama Prefecture. He was working as a farmer in Dumbea, Kanaky / New Caledonia when the Pacific War broke out. He was taken to Australia and interned at Loveday Internment Camp in South Australia. He had a cerebral haemorrhage, was taken into the camp hospital, and died a couple of days later. He was 70 years old. His grave is in the Japanese Cemetery in Cowra, New South Wales, Australia.
–Mayu Kanamori
More info:
Shingo Usami
Artist/s Statement:
Mr Ueda was from a small village in Wakayama Prefecture, which is not far from where my mother was born and grew up. This photo was also taken in the outback of Queensland. I was mesmerised by the unique beauty of the dry earth, which is so different from what I’m familiar with. I came to the realisation that ending one’s life in a foreign land means becoming a part of the unfamiliar earth. The land we stand on right now was created by the lives of countless people who ended up here expectedly or unexpectedly. I wanted to pay respect to his life by presenting this photo of the dry, unusual, but strikingly beautiful earth of Australia.
Artist Bio:
Shingo Usami is a Sydney based Japanese actor who has worked extensively in theatre, film, TV, and voiceover in Australia since 1998. His recent TV and film credits include the American network AMC’s TV series ‘The Terror: Infamy’, and Apple TV’s ‘Invasion’. Other film and TV credits include ‘Unbroken’, ‘Paper Planes’, ‘Emperor’, ‘Red Dog’, ‘Broken Sun’, ‘The Pacific’, and ‘Curtin’. His theatre credits include ‘Twelfth Night’, ‘Measure for Measure’, ‘Servant of Two Masters’, ‘The Floating World’, ‘Coup d’Etat’, ‘Sadako and The Thousand Paper Cranes’, and the Australian tour of ‘Miss Saigon’ 2007/2008. In 2023, he co-directed and acted in the iconic Japanese play ‘The Face of Jizo’ by Hisashi Inoue, for which he received a nomination for the Sydney Theatre Awards and Time Out Arts and Culture Awards.