Hajime Sawatari

photography by CHIKASHI SUZUKI
Interview by MASAKI KATO
style by ERIKA KURIHARA

 

MASAKI KATO — Can you tell us about your background?
HAJIME SAWATARI — I was born in Hongō, Tokyo in 1940. The Pacific War had already begun, and I fled to Yamagata Prefecture in the Tōhoku region for safety when I was four years old. My father was at the front as a soldier, so my family was scattered all over the place. I have no memory of living together as one family. Being with my grandmother is all I can remember as a child.

MASAKI KATO — I heard that your father was a poet, and he worked in a bookstore in Tokyo. What kind of a parent was he?
HAJIME SAWATARI — Actually, I have almost no memory of my father. After the war ended, my father fell sick with tuberculosis, went away to…