Japanese Prime Minister’s Photo Exhibit on Display

For the first time in the United States, 32 photographs taken by Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto--an avid photographer--are on display at a Little Tokyo gallery.

The photographs at the Doizaki Gallery of the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center were selected from Hashimoto’s collection of pictures he had taken while on trips to France, Nepal, the United States and across Japan.

His wife, Kumiko Hashimoto, attended the opening Thursday.

Reading a statement from the prime minister, she said he selected photographs of mountains because they express the greatness of nature, “which I dearly love, plants and flowers, which convey the breath of life [and] casual expressions of birds and animals and scenes I discovered in between official duties from trips I have taken--photographs for which I have the most attachment.”