WAKABAYASHI Tokichi
Born: 5 March 1874 – Died: 23 January 1945
Particulars:
Tokichi was born in Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. He was a widower working as a farmer in Kanaky / New Caledonia when the Pacific War broke out. He was taken to Australia and interned at Loveday Internment Camp in South Australia. He was admitted to hospital in June 1944 with dysphagia. He was in and out of different hospitals for the last few months of that year, but died in the new year from thyroid cancer aged 70. His grave is in the Japanese Cemetery in Cowra, New South Wales, Australia.
–Mayu Kanamori
More info:
Taka Takiguchi
Artist/s Statement:
Dear Mr Tokichi Wakabayashi,
Welcome back to Hiroshima. When I was little, I often took the Fukuen Line to visit my cousins in Kannabe, Hiroshima. I also have a faint memory of the Ashida River. Tōde Station was unmanned back then, and surely still is today. My grandmother’s first husband was a police officer. While living in Fukuyama, he received his draft notice and took the Fukuen Line back to Shōbara – their hometown.
A thousand winds blow
across the vast sky
birds returning home
–Chizuko Shigeta
At the age of 24, you left Japan from Ujina Port, spent 40 years in New Caledonia, and another three in the Loveday Internment Camp. So many young people of that turbulent era were stirred by its tides – thriving, struggling, swept along. You, at 24, departed from Tōde Station in 1901; my grandfather, at 36, and my grandmother, at 26, passed through the same station in 1945 on their way to a deployment ceremony. And then there was me, a 10-year-old child in 1985, travelling to visit my cousin. Will we all meet again on the platform of Tōde Station, on an autumn evening, as birds? Or will we become a thousand soft, cold winds of autumn, crossing above the Ashida River?
Welcome back, indeed.
Sincerely, Taka Takiguchi
Artist Bio:
Taka Takiguchi (滝口貴) is an independent artist and producer of Japanese (Hiroshima) heritage related stories based in Naarm / Melbourne, Australia. His practice delves into personal stories, places, their historical contexts, and our presence within them today. He explores relational phenomena – between memory, time, and language – bringing them to life through poetry, scriptwriting, and movement based techniques, including the Suzuki Method, Butoh, and shamanic/trance dance. His late grandmother’s thousands of haiku and handwritten journals remain a constant source of inspiration for his passion for writing poetry.