I started using a camera in 1950. I lived in a town next to a U.S. military base in the suburbs of Nagoya City. I snapped pictures of familiar everyday scenes in my hometown, a town where American soldiers and mixed-race children were living together as if it were normal to coexist in this way.

However, this ordinary sight was also the representation of a historic change that had occurred in Japan as a result of losing the war: occupation by foreign troops. Thus, for me, these common scenes overlapped with Japan's postwar history like a double exposure.

I was fifteen years old when Japan lost the war. The adults had insisted that Japan would win, so the children, including myself, were perplexed when we witnessed our defeat.

Right after the war, Japan was in total disorder and there were shortages of everything. The shortage of food was especially painful for rapidly growing children. However, supplies were abundant on the other side of the metal fences and barbed wire that surrounded the U.S. base. The U.S. side looked bright, like heaven, while on this side, there was hell as we struggled with starvation and poverty. When a child with an empty stomach held out his hand, a GI gave chewing gum and chocolate. This fostered distrust for the adults who once called these men brutal American/British bastards.

Around that time, I first heard the word "democracy." As our defeat marked a turning point, traditional values were completely altered and the reality of life quickly changed. I lost my belief in everything. The only things that I believed in were the things I could touch and the things that I saw with my own eyes. Before long, I encountered a camera and became fascinated with photography.

While looking back on the last half-century, the biggest culture shock for me happened with our defeat and occupation by U.S. troops.

It was in 1969 that I went to Okinawa for the first time. For pilgrims visiting U.S. bases at various places in Japan, from Hokkaido to Kyushu, the only untouched sanctuary was Okinawa. Military facilities are so concentrated in Okinawa that one could say "There are no bases in Okinawa, but Okinawa is part of the bases" However, Okinawa in those days was put under a trusteeship by the United States, and Japanese people were not allowed to enter the area without permission from the American authorities.

For the month I was permitted to visit, I stayed close to the vicinity of the bases and carried out research. When time was running out, I applied for an extension to my visa for one more month and obtained it. This time I traveled away from the bases, moving around to see the Ryukyu Islands. It was there that I was hit by intense culture shock.

I had said that one feature of Japan's postwar history was, in a word, Americanization. Before I went there, I had an image of Okinawa in my mind, namely, that Okinawa must be more Americanized than Japan because U.S. forces had governed it for a quarter of a century.

However, Okinawa's villages and islands were not Americanized, unlike other places in Japan. I was surprised with Okinawa's originality and intensity. This culture shock prompted me to visit on a yearly basis. After Okinawa's reversion to Japan in 1972, I settled down in Naha City and Miyakojima Island and focused on Okinawa as the site where I would uninterruptedly take photographs.

In the villages and islands, every now and then I would come to a halt when confronted with the complicated mixed emotions of tenderness and nostalgia. What was that? It seemed as if it was a subconscious calling of ethnic blood or an invaluable culture that Japan had abandoned in the process of rapid modernization.

I have written the following words in my picture book The PENCIL of the SUN "Though it may cause a misunderstanding, I don't come to Okinawa but return to Japan, and I don't go back to Tokyo but leave for America"

The Pencil of the Sun became a watershed, and I stopped taking black-and¬ white photographs and shifted to color photography. America could be observed in the shadow of the black-and-white pictures. Those pictures definitively framed Japan, which could, however, be regarded as another America.

I am often asked why I insist on color rather than black-and-white photographs.

The scenery and way of life in Okinawa are beautiful. The blue sky is endless. The sea is blue enough to dye your hand. While reflecting the sun, the sea changes its color from majestic blue, emerald, peacock green, to cobalt. As the sun burns, the wind shines. Colors in the subtropical zone are dazzling.

While in Okinawa, I thought that my transition to color photography occurred naturally. This may be attributed to the technological advances avail¬able in film and photographic paper. At that time, it became somewhat possible to control printed colors.

Nevertheless, I've been tackling color prints for over a quarter of a century. Even after I left Okinawa and came back to Tokyo, I did not return to working in monochrome. I used to find it impossible to describe why, but I have begun to understand it a little as a result of thoroughly reorganizing works I've created over the past fifty years.

It took me a very long time to talk about the meaning of engagement I found through taking pictures in that way. Photography comes first and language follows.

What I realize is that my obsession with America is disappearing. America sometimes becomes visible in the black-and-white pictures, but the shadow of America is not obvious in the color prints.

The U.S. bases are still here. In fact, their presence is encouraged and has increased as a result of Japan's budgetary support for the presence of U.S. troops. Americanization has hardly slowed down. It has advanced to such a level that nobody would even be surprised if a fifty-first star on the Stars and Stripes were to be added to represent Japan.

In contrast, I achieved de-Americanization through the experiences I had in Okinawa while changing my photographic approach from monochrome to color. And now, I float lightly around the earth like polystyrene peanuts that are floating on the surface of the sea. This is not a departure to America or Japan, but is a departure toward a chaotic sea, still unnamed.

My color photographs first move toward the essence of Japan, but do not stay there. They then leap to the other side of Japan, but the landing site is unseen.

"Tomatsu Shomei. "Toward a Chaotic Sea," Setting Sun. (Eds.) Ivan Vartanian, Hatanaka Akihiro, and Kambayashi Yutaka. New York: Aperture, 2006; 30-33.