Zhao root(Chou Gunjae)(Japan name·Kinichi Murai(Kaneichi Murai)) was born in Aichi Prefecture in 1933 (Showa 8). Born in a poor family, he dropped out of junior high school at the age of 15 and went to work in a lignite mine in Gifu Prefecture to support his family's finances. For the next several years, he engaged in dangerous coal mining work that often resulted in accidents, but eventually he could no longer bear the premonition of death in the ``darkness of the underground'' and began to desire ``to escape to the surface, to the light.'' . The painful experience at this time later led to a deep sense of empathy for the residents of Leprosy sanatorium.

I moved to Tokyo in 1957 (Showa 32), and in 1961 (Showa 36), when I was working as a lighting designer for a film production company, I visited National Sanatorium Tama Zenshoen for the first time. There, he met Korean residents living in Japan and was deeply shocked by the thought, ``The people here are trapped in a darkness with no exit, just like what I once experienced underground.'' I became convinced that my mission was to convey to society the earnest desire of residents to escape from that darkness, and this was the opportunity for me to pick up a camera for the first time. This was the birth of a photographer whose sole purpose was to take pictures of residents and sanatoriums. Over the next 20 years, he visited 10 sanatoriums across the country and took over 20,000 photographs while eating and sleeping with the residents.

Cho Geun-jae's photographs depict a wife giving water to her disabled husband from a kettle, a visually impaired person reading Braille with his tongue and lips instead of his numb fingers, funerals of deceased residents, It clearly depicts the people living there and their way of life, such as Patient exercises. These are many scenes that could not have been filmed without a strong relationship of trust with the residents. It also shows the crematorium, confinement rooms, etc., and conveys the uniqueness of the sanatorium at the time when they existed. This exhibition will introduce 81 of these photographs.

Please take this opportunity to remember the images of the residents that Cho Geun-jae felt it was necessary to convey to society through photography.