Deer graze, leave tracks, raise their young, and move through the seasons. They are no different from any other wild animal.
Yet, through a curious turn of history, in the ancient Japanese city of Nara, they walk freely through streets, parks, shrines, and intersections alongside people.
In March 2011, two weeks after the Great East Japan Earthquake, I returned to Nara after many years away. There, I encountered stags locking antlers in front of a hotel and a pair of deer standing calmly in the middle of an intersection. In that moment, they appeared like the rightful inhabitants of a city from which humans had somehow vanished.
The sika deer of Nara are revered as divine messengers of Kasuga Taisha Shrine and are protected as a national treasure. Elsewhere in Japan, however, deer are often regarded as agricultural and forestry pests, and hundreds of thousands are culled each year as part of wildlife management programs.
Whether they are protected as sacred beings or killed as destructive animals depends largely on where they happen to live. In this sense, deer reflect the contradictions of human society. The boundaries that define them, sacred or profane, protected or culled, are not drawn by deer, but by people.
The deer themselves know nothing of these roles. With light steps, they cross the boundaries we create and continue to live their lives.
As I watch them through the lens, Deer Planet unfolds before me.
About Yoko Ishii
Yoko Ishii is a Japanese photographer based in Kanagawa, Japan. She received her Master of Fine Arts degree from Kyoto University of the Arts.
Her long-term project Deer Planet explores the shifting relationship between deer and humans in contemporary Japan. Since 2011, she has photographed deer across the country, from Hokkaido to Okinawa, examining how they move across the boundaries between the sacred and the ordinary, protection and culling, nature and human-made environments.
In 2015, she published the photobook Dear Deer with Little More. Following her first solo exhibition at Ginza Nikon Salon in 2016, she has exhibited internationally in France, Germany, the United States, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Taiwan. Her work has been featured in international media, including Le Monde, The Independent, The Huffington Post, and WIRED. [Official Website]
