This photographic project examines the concrete pillboxes the Imperial Japanese Army constructed during World War II. After the fall of Attu Island off the coast of Alaska in May 1943, the Japanese High Command anticipated that the United States would next invade Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan’s four main islands. Although an extensive network of pillboxes was constructed along the coastline, they were never used in combat before Japan’s surrender in August 1945. Most were also never dismantled after the war. Over the years, these large concrete structures remained in the landscape as remnants of a past that has gradually faded away from public consciousness. Ninety-five pillboxes are known to remain but are now gradually being consumed by coastline erosion. This project explores the disappearance of these pillboxes from the landscape as an allegory for the impermanence of both the material used for construction and the memory they represent.

Noritaka Minami is an artist based in Chicago. He graduated from University of California, Berkeley with a bachelor’s degree in art practice and from University of California, Irvine with an MFA in studio art. Minami is currently an associate professor of photography at Loyola University Chicago. He has received grants from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Illinois Arts Council Agency, and Center for Cultural Innovation. Minami’s works are held in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Harvard Univerity’s Graduate School of Design (GSD), and Center for Photography at Woodstock. His monograph 1972—Nakagin Capsule Tower (Kehrer Verlag, 2015) received the 2015 Architectural Book Award from the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt, Germany. In 2022, he was commissioned by the GSD to produce a photographic series for the publication John Andrews: Architect of Uncommon Sense (Harvard Design Press, 2023).