Exploring a Japanese Fishing Village through Art

Exploring a Japanese Fishing Village through Art

A Small Grant was awarded in March 2025 to support travel to Kitaushima village, Sado Island by artists Michael Collier, who recorded the sounds of swallows and other birds in order to then render them into visual pieces, and Hazel Barron-Cooper, who conducted research for watercolour paintings. Our funding is also supporting travel by Professor John Williams from Sophia University to screen his documentary film about Kitaushima at the BAJS Conference in Cardiff.

Art exhibitions, poetry readings and film screenings of work inspired by the village of Kitaushima on Sado Island, Japan are taking place in Newcastle, Redcar and Cardiff.

Please see below for more details.

NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY, Fine Art Department
9 to 30 August 2025
Mon-Saturday 10-5pm
New Watercolor works by Hazel Barron-Cooper inspired by the rocks, the sea, the sky and mist of Kitaushima are on display at Newcastle University, Fine Art Department, throughout August.

REDCAR CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY – 24/25/26August 2025 
An Afternoon on Sado Island (24 August – 2 p.m. – 4 p.m.)
Welsh/Japanese filmmaker John Williams will screen clips from his award-winning documentary,

North Cormorant Island, which was shot over ten years in the remote fishing village of Kitaushima on Sado Island, Japan. He will talk about the village, about the history and culture of Sado and his project involving artists working in the area.

Mike Collier will talk about the art works he is currently making, inspired by his recent trip to Sado
and John will read from his cycle of poems inspired by the village. Followed by a Sake Tasting!
Mike’s work will be on display at the play at the Redcar Gallery on the 25th and 26th
The poetry reading and film screening are OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.
https://www.rccag.co.uk/events/sado-island-by-john-williams-film-screenplay

CARDIFF UNIVERSITY, 4 September 2025
(BAJS Conference, British Association of Japanese Studies), 6.00 to 8.30pm
Cardiff Business School Postgraduate Teaching Centre
Poetry reading by Yasuhiro Yotsumoto,
Yasuhiro will read from a cycle of poems inspired by the local legends, history and people of Kitaushima and Masaragawa on Sado.

Before the reading, John Williams will screen his award-winning documentary film North Cormorant Island.
(87 mins)

North Cormorant Island
North Cormorant Island was filmed over ten years (between 2014 and 2024) in the remote fishing village of Kitaushima (which means North Cormorant Island), on Sado Island, Japan. Until the 1960’s the village was only accessible by boat, but a couple of hundred people lived there, rice-farming, fishing and raising cattle. After a road was built, young people began to drift to the cities and now there are less than thirty residents, most of them over seventy years old. The film blends observational documentary, following the everyday life of the village, the rituals, customs and work of the people who live there with a personal, poetic reflection on the director’s childhood in his father’s village in Wales. It is a film about time, place, mortality and human relationships with the land and the sea.
https://events.cardiff.ac.uk/view/bajs-conference-event-2025-film-screening-of-the-squid-and-the-pine-and-poetry-reading/