Yamashita stood up to his waist in a temple pond to get this photo of a frog just about to jump.
1 Q: Is it true that before becoming a
photographer, you were an English teacher?
Yeah, I spent four years in Japan in the early
’70s, and two of those years I was teaching.
5 There was a huge demand in Japan for English.
The Japanese studied English at school, but
didn’t speak much English, so as a native
speaker I could help out. It was a great job.
I was in Japan at the time to get in touch
10 with my roots, trying to see how Japanese
I might be. Growing up in the States with
a Japanese name and face, I really never felt
100 percent American because I didn’t look
like the American majority. We were the only
15 Asian family in the town where I lived. So, after
studying history in the States, I decided to go
to Japan and have the experience of living there.
Q: Did you know any Japanese before
you went there?
20 No. I learned the hard way, which was total
immersion,1 working in a company where
nobody spoke English. In the beginning it was
tough. The only things I knew were the names
of food, since I grew up with Japanese food.
1
If you learn a language by total immersion, you learn
by living in a culture where the language is spoken.
25 My parents were both fluent in Japanese, but
they only used Japanese at home as sort of the
secret language. For example, when Christmas
was coming, they would sing in Japanese about
what presents they were going to get. There was
30 also the pressure of fitting in. As a young boy
in the United States, I tried to be like everyone
else. So, until I traveled to Japan, knowing
Japanese was something that never really
interested me. If anything, I avoided learning it.
35 Q: And it was in Japan that you bought
your first camera. Is that right?
I did. Like every amateur, I bought a camera
to essentially record what I was seeing and
doing, to send pictures back to family and
40 friends. I spent some time learning about it, and
I just got really obsessed by the whole process.
The more I got into photography, the more
I loved it. Every few months I left Japan to
renew my visa, and so I went to a different
45 country each time, taking pictures just to show
friends and family. As my pictures got better,
people told me I should show them to other
photographers. Eventually, I met an agent and
decided I wanted to be a professional.
1B A Life in Pictures 17
50 Q: As a professional photographer, what
would you say makes a good photograph?
In the case of National Geographic magazine,
I like to call them “page stoppers.” They are
pictures with such great visual impact that
55 the viewer has to stop turning the pages.
You’re arrested2 by the framing,3 the light,
the color, or the subject, and you stare at it.
Then you’re likely to read the captions and be
drawn into reading the whole story. For me,
60 that is an ideal picture.
Q: For photographing a story like Basho’s
Trail, how much planning is involved and how
much is improvisation?4
I prepare as much as I can. I read about six
65 different translations of Basho’s book, Narrow
Road to the Deep North. I thought about what
happened on each section of the route: where
he talks about the banana leaf, and where on
the Mogami River he wrote a poem about
70 swift5 water.
So, certain things I was looking for, but others
were not so place-specific. Basho mentions
the moon many times, so I knew I had to do
a moon picture, which sounds easy. But the
75 moon is only full once a month, and the sky
may be cloudy. Or, if the moon is rising too
early, or too late, I wouldn’t be able to see it.
But I try my best to be in the right place to
get the right subject at the right time.
Moonrise over Matsushima’s pine-covered islands
18 Unit 1 Words and Pictures
A maple leaf on rocks in a waterfall on the Mogami River, Japan
80 Q: Were there other important moments
you remember while doing that article?
Well, there’s that frog photo. It was in summer
the first week I was there. I was shooting some
banana leaves under the roof of a Japanese
85 temple. It was pouring rain, and it was beautiful.
As I was walking back to the car, I looked down
into this little pond and saw a frog sitting on a
leaf. So, my job was to get a good picture of it.
I started out shooting from the land, but
90 the shot wasn’t quite right. Then I got
into the water. I was up to my waist in this
smelly temple pond, early in the morning,
concentrating on a frog and thinking “Thank
God the caretakers6 of the temple haven’t
95 arrived yet!” I managed to anticipate the
moment just before it was ready to jump, and
that’s when I took the photo. You’ll see that
the frog is just about to turn to its right, and
in the next picture, it was flying.
2
If you arrest a process, you stop it from continuing.
3
The framing of a photograph refers to where the photographer
sets the borders of the photograph.
4
If you improvise, you make or do something using whatever you
have or without having planned it in advance.
5
Something that is swift moves very quickly.
6
A caretaker is a person who takes care of a house or property
when the owner is not there.

100 Q: Are there other photos from your
career that you’re particularly fond of?
One time I was in a little village in Tajikistan,
waiting to shoot something at sunrise for an
article on Marco Polo. I was wandering about
105 with nobody around when I saw a kid walking
down the road. Then more kids joined up.
I followed them, and they ended up in this
schoolyard. By then the sun was rising behind
me. It was extremely bright, and focused on
110 those kids.
If you look at that picture, the shadow is
right behind them. That means that, if they
look toward me, they can’t see me because
I’m in the glare of the sun. So, I got a very
115 natural picture of them preparing for school
in incredible light.
Yamashita is particularly fond of this photo of a group
of Tajik schoolchildren: “I got a very natural photograph
of them preparing for school in incredible light.”
Q: Finally, what do you think it takes
to become a great photographer?
Well, there is not that much economic
120 motivation, considering the difficulty of
selling pictures and getting in the door.
What it takes is basically passion; you have
to be really obsessed by your craft.7
Especially today, with the competition
125 being what it is, to be a success you really
have to eat and drink photography.
It’s passion that drives you forward.
7
 ou can use craft to refer to any activity
Y
that involves doing something skillfully.
1B A Life in Pictures 19