言語野でシャッターを切る哲学者｜島﨑康輔

「シャッターって、どうゆう時に切ってしまうの？」

"When is it that you find yourself pressing the shutter?"

海に向かってレンズを向ける横顔にたずねる。

I ask, watching his profile as he points the lens toward the sea.

「そうですね...ときめいた瞬間ですかね。感覚的にここいいなっていう」

"Let's see... probably the moment something makes my heart skip. A feeling of, this is it."

ファインダーから目を離すことなく、彼は上の空で答える。夢中なのだ。

He answers without ever taking his eye from the viewfinder, half somewhere else entirely. He is absorbed.

高知県生まれの写真家・島﨑康輔は、不思議な空気を纏う青年だ。好奇心旺盛で博学な彼は、写真や芸術はもちろん、歴史・文学・社会・科学など、あらゆる分野の本を読むのが日常。知識の「広さ」だけでなく、しっかり咀嚼して自分の言葉で語る「深さ」も持っている。ふいにこぼれる、人生を達観したような言葉に、29歳という年齢を時々忘れてしまう。そして彼の作品もまた、彼そのもののような年齢不詳な魅力があるように思う。

Kosuke Shimazaki, a photographer born in Kochi, carries an air about him that's hard to place. Endlessly curious and widely read, he moves easily between photography and art, but also history, literature, sociology, science, whatever book happens to be in front of him. It isn't only the breadth of what he knows; he has the depth to chew it over and speak it back in his own words. Every so often a line slips out of him with the weight of someone who has already seen through life, and I forget, for a moment, that he's only twenty-nine. His work, too, seems to carry that same ageless quality he does.

「その"ときめき"を、あえて言語化すると？」

"If you had to put that 'flutter' into words?"

少し意地悪な質問をしてみると、彼はうーんと考えた後「あれです、ときめく瞬間には多分、光がある。太陽の光が一番美しいと思ってるんで」と答え、「例えば、あの波に光が当たることで、陰影や流れが見える。そうゆうのがすごく好きです」と波を指差しながら力説してくる。

I ask, a little unkindly. He thinks it over, then says, "There's probably light in it, whatever moment makes my heart flutter. I think sunlight is the most beautiful thing there is." Pointing at the waves, he goes on, almost urgently: "Like when the light hits the water and you can suddenly see the shadow, the movement in it. I really love that."

あまりにも純粋で飾らないまっすぐな言葉と眼差しに、思わず目を背けてしまう。やましいことがあるわけでもないのに。

His words and his gaze are so plain, so unguarded, that I find myself looking away, even though I've done nothing to be ashamed of.

高知県香南市にある吉川漁港は、彼を育てた海。幼い頃も、大人になった今も、帰郷するたびにふらりと訪れる場所だという。

Yoshikawa Fishing Port in Konan City, Kochi, is the sea that raised him. As a child, and still now as an adult, it's the place he wanders back to every time he returns home.

「高知に帰ってこの海にくるたびに思うんですが、遠くを眺めるんですよ。遠景を。東京はビルも人も、どうしても景色が近いです。僕はもともと自然の中で育っているんで、こういう景色を見ないとソワソワしてしまいます。ここでは人があんなに小さく、海がこんなに広い。僕らは自然の一部に過ぎないという当たり前のことを、改めて再認識できるんです」。

"Every time I come back to Kochi and stand at this sea, I think the same thing: I'm looking at something far away. Distance itself. In Tokyo, everything, the buildings, the people, is close up, whether you like it or not. I grew up surrounded by nature, so if I don't see a view like this, I start to feel restless. Out here, people are so small, and the sea is so wide. It reminds me, all over again, of something obvious: we're just a part of nature."

平日であることもあってか人気はなく、ぼんやり海を眺める作業着のおじさんや、犬の散歩をする人など、地元の人の日常がポツポツと垣間見える。

Perhaps because it's a weekday, the port is nearly empty. Here and there, glimpses of local life drift by: a man in work clothes gazing absently at the sea, someone walking a dog.

「海に敵うものはないんです。美しいし、無があるんですよ。何も考えず波の音を聞きながら、ただ眺めます。海を構成するのは、波と、鳥と、時々船ぐらい。あとはただの青くて大きい自然なんです。"何もない"の究極形なのに、何かがあることを常に教えてもらえるんです」

"Nothing can rival the sea. It's beautiful, and it's nothing, all at once. I just watch it, listening to the waves without thinking about anything. What makes up the sea is waves, birds, and now and then a boat. Beyond that, it's just this huge, blue expanse of nature. It's the ultimate form of 'nothing,' and yet it never stops teaching me that something is there."

彼と編集長と３人、海に目を向ける。日本海側で育った人間からすると、高知の海はとても大きく、ポジティブな生命力が溢れている。美しく、たっぷりと包容力があり、そして少しだけ怖い。畏怖とはこのことだ。

The three of us, him, the editor, and myself, turn our eyes to the sea. For someone raised on the Sea of Japan side, the ocean in Kochi feels immense, brimming with a bright, forward-leaning kind of life force. Beautiful, generous almost to excess, and just a little frightening. This, I think, is what awe actually feels like.

2026年に発行した、彼にとって初の写真集【臨在】は５冊から構成されている。写真集でありながら、詩集であり、絵本であり、映画でもあるような、彼らしいいくつもの仕掛けがある。そして彼の大切な存在、愛犬・ももの死がきっかけになっている。

Published in 2026, Rinzai (Presence) is his first photo book, made up of five separate volumes. It's a photo book, and at the same time a collection of poems, a picture book, even something like a film, full of the kind of layered devices that feel entirely his own. Its starting point was the death of a being dear to him: his dog, Momo.

愛犬の不調を知り急いで帰った実家で、庭にある一輪の薔薇が彼の意識をひきとめた。「季節外れに、蕾が開こうとしてたんです。もものことで頭がいっぱいなのに、なぜかその薔薇も気になって。無意識にシャッターを切っていました。そこが始まりです」。身近な存在を撮ってこなかった彼にとって、それは特別な感覚だった。

He'd rushed home after learning his dog wasn't well, and in the garden, a single rose caught his attention. "It was trying to open out of season. My mind was completely full of Momo, but somehow I couldn't stop thinking about that rose too. I pressed the shutter without even realizing it. That's where it started." For someone who had never photographed the people and things closest to him, it was an unfamiliar feeling.

その日の夜に母親の腕の中で、ももは息を引き取る。

That night, Momo died in his mother's arms.

翌朝、咲き誇る薔薇をみた時のことを「表現が難しいんですが、僕にとって特別な瞬間でした。そこに宿る見えない何かを、はっきりと感じたんです」と、強い眼差しで語る。

The next morning, seeing the rose in full bloom, he says, with a firm look in his eyes, "It's hard to put into words, but it was a singular moment for me. I felt something invisible living inside it, clearly."

そこから彼は変わった。いままで自分が見過ごしてきた、日常の中の身近なものに目が止まり、美しさや目に見えない気配を感じる。言葉にできない自分の心の振動に、価値を見出すようになった。

He changed after that. Things close at hand, things he'd overlooked his whole life, began to catch his eye; he started noticing beauty, an invisible presence, in the everyday. He came to find value in the tremors of his own heart, even the ones he couldn't put into words.

「身近なものの美しさに気づいてから、幸せになりました。小さな命の循環みたいなものがそこらじゅうにあり、目を配っていきたいと思うようになって。そこから、僕の作家としての活動が始まりました。」

"Once I noticed the beauty in the things close to me, I became happier. I realized these small cycles of life are everywhere, and I wanted to keep paying attention to them. That's where my work as an artist began."

【臨在】のあとがきに書かれた、彼の言葉だ。

These are his own words, from the afterword of Rinzai.

「本やメディアで"どう生きるか"へのフォーカスはあっても、"どう死んでいくか"はあまり描かれてないと思っていて。死を題材にすると、人は目を塞いでしまうのかもしれませんが、僕はそもそも死は明るいものだと捉えていて。死から生を感じる、そんな作品もいいんじゃないかと思い、【臨在】では「生と死の循環」をテーマにしています。でも悲しい「死」で終わりたくないので、後半になるに連れて、音楽でいうところの高揚していくようなイメージです」。

"Books and media focus a lot on 'how to live,' but I don't think 'how to die' gets nearly as much attention. Maybe people just look away when death becomes the subject. But I've always thought of death as something bright, fundamentally. I liked the idea of a work where you feel life through death, so for Rinzai I made 'the cycle of life and death' the theme. I didn't want to end on a sad note, though, so as it moves toward the second half, I wanted it to build, the way music builds toward something uplifting."

こんなに満面の笑みで、イキイキと、「死」を語る人はあまりいない。

I've rarely met anyone who talks about death with such a bright, full smile.

【臨在】は全編モノクロ写真で構成されている。仕事ではカラー写真を多く撮ってきた彼だが、自身の作品をつくるとなると「自分らしい色を足したい」という雑念が生まれたという。

Rinzai is made up entirely of black-and-white photographs. He's shot plenty of color work professionally, but when it came to making his own work, he found himself distracted by the urge to "add my own kind of color."

「僕にとってカラーってすごくポップで、強い情報を持っているんです」

"To me, color is very pop, it carries a lot of strong information."

例えばファッションやメディアの撮影では、被写体や商品をより美しく見せるために色を足したり鮮やかさを調整したりレタッチする。作品をカラーで制作しようとした時「自分らしい色を足したい」という雑念が湧いたという。「自分らしい色とは何だろう」と考えるようになって、さまざまな写真家や日本の写真史について勉強した。

In fashion or media shoots, for instance, color gets added and vibrance adjusted in retouching, all to make the subject or the product look more beautiful. When he tried to make his own work in color, that same distracting thought crept in: I want to add a color that's mine. It sent him down a path of asking what "his own color" even was, studying various photographers and the history of Japanese photography along the way.

「そうすると、だんだん色に固執して、自分が何を伝えたいのかわからなくなったんです。今回の作品には"生と死の循環"というテーマがあったのに、いつの間にか故郷の自然や家族を美しく見せたいという方向に意識が向いていた。いわゆる"映える"を考えてしまったんです」

"The more I did that, the more fixated on color I became, until I lost track of what I actually wanted to say. This work had a theme, the cycle of life and death, but somewhere along the way my focus had drifted toward wanting to make my hometown, my family, look beautiful. I'd started thinking in terms of what would look good, what would 'pop' on a screen."

そこで、彼は色を手放した。

So he let color go.

「モノクロにしたら、一枚の写真に写っているものと深く向き合えるようになったんです。写真を選ぶ時も、"自分の心が動いたか"というシンプルな基準で選べるようになりました」。雑念を削ぎ落とした先の、白と黒、光と影の世界が彼の波長に合ったのだ。

"Once I went monochrome, I found I could face what was actually in each photograph more deeply. Choosing images became simple, too, I could just ask whether it had moved something in me." Stripped of distraction, the world of black and white, of light and shadow, turned out to be exactly his wavelength.

彼を象徴するキーワードの一つが「アニミズム」。もとは宗教の概念として広まった言葉で、日本の神道の「八百万の神」にも通ずる。もう一つが、【センス・オブ・ワンダー（The Sense of Wonder）】という、作家・レイチェルカーソンの本のタイトルだ。自然を単なる「もの」ではなく、魂が宿る存在ととらえていることや、自然の不思議さや美しさに心を動かされる感覚の大切さ、人間が自然の一部であることなどを伝えている。

One word that comes to symbolize him is "animism," a term that spread first as a religious concept and connects, too, to the "eight million gods" of Japanese Shinto. Another is the title of a book by the writer Rachel Carson: The Sense of Wonder. It speaks of nature not as mere "thing" but as something inhabited by spirit; of the importance of being moved by nature's strangeness and beauty; of the fact that people, too, are simply a part of it.

「そうゆう価値観を持った人が増えると、自然や身の回りのものにやさしい気持ちになれて、世界が平和になるのかなと」彼は真剣な顔で言う。

"If more people held onto that kind of outlook, I think it'd make them gentler toward nature, toward the things around them, and maybe the world would end up a little more peaceful," he says, his face entirely serious.

世界平和を目標とする人の話を聞くことは多々ある。それぞれ世界への憂いやビジョンがあるのは分かるがいずれも解像度が低く、正直あまり心に響いたことはない。

I've heard plenty of people talk about wanting world peace as a goal. Each of them clearly carries some worry about the world, some vision for it, but the resolution is usually low, and if I'm honest, it's rarely moved me.

けれど彼の言葉は、すぅっと心に沁みてきた。綺麗事を言ってるつもりなど微塵もない、ひたすら大真面目で、静かな願い。「本当だ、そうかもしれない」「そんな世界になると素敵だ」と思わせる力がある。彼の美しい世界を信じたくなってしまうのだ。

But his words seeped in quietly, without resistance. There isn't a trace of him trying to sound nice; it's simply, earnestly, a quiet wish. It carries the kind of force that makes you think, that's true, maybe it really is, or, that would be a beautiful world. It makes you want to believe in the world he sees.

感受性が豊かで、好奇心旺盛で、勉強熱心。彼の中には常にたくさんのものが溢れているような気がして「頭を空っぽにしたいと思うことはある？」とたずねる。

Sensitive, endlessly curious, always studying something. He seems to always be overflowing with things inside him, so I ask, "Do you ever want to empty your head completely?"

彼はうなずいて「例えば映像や写真を撮ったりする時に、たくさんのことを考えちゃうんです。やることはシンプルなのに。人の30倍ぐらい不器用なんです」と答えた後、「僕はある種の"欲"みたいなものを無くしたいんです」とつぶやいた。

He nods. "When I'm shooting video or photos, for instance, I end up thinking about way too many things, even though what I'm actually doing is simple. I'm about thirty times clumsier than most people." Then, quietly, he adds, "I want to get rid of some kind of desire in myself."

終始穏やかで、ついに編集長に「ブッダ」と呼ばれはじめた彼は、横の競争を好まない。他者との差別化のためのインプットも必要最低限。彼が繰り返しているのは「己との対話」で、いつも自分の内側のことで悩んできたという。そんな彼の救いになったのが禅や仏教の考え方で、特に鈴木大拙の存在が彼の一つ土台になっているという。

Calm throughout, to the point that the editor eventually started calling him "Buddha," he has no interest in competing sideways with others. He takes in only the bare minimum needed to differentiate himself from anyone else. What he keeps returning to, instead, is a "dialogue with himself"; he says he's always struggled with what's inside him. What has saved him, in that struggle, is the thinking of Zen and Buddhism, and in particular, the presence of D. T. Suzuki, which he says has become one foundation of who he is.

なるほど。彼が海や自然を好むのも、モノクロや、アニミズム、禅と親和性が高いのも、すべて「無」でつながっていく。多くを受け取ってしまう感受性とあふれる知識を整え、静かに自分と向き合える「無」を求めてきたのかもしれない。

I see. His love of the sea and of nature, his affinity for monochrome, for animism, for Zen, all of it connects back to "nothing." Perhaps what he's been searching for, all along, is a kind of nothing, a way to settle a sensitivity that takes in too much, an overflowing knowledge, and quietly face himself.

少年であり世捨て人のような彼の思う「いいもの」に、自然と興味が湧いてきた。

I find myself naturally curious about what "good" means to someone who is at once boyish and something like a hermit.

「長く使ってるからこそ見える経年変化のあるものが、僕にとってのいいものです。カメラは、同じ機種の後世代しか選ばないんです。今もカメラが2機あるんですけど、同じ機種の一番新しいのと、古いものの2つです。持ってる感覚も操作系も同じなんで、自分の身体に染み付いていて。"体の一部になれるもの"というか、自分の身体にしっくりくるものを選びます」

"For me, good means something whose changes over time only become visible because you've used it for so long. With cameras, I only ever choose a later generation of the same model. I have two right now, the newest version of the same model, and the old one. They feel the same in the hand, the controls are the same, so they've become part of my body. I choose things that can become an extension of you, things that just feel right against your own body."

無意識で写真の話になっていく。というか、ずっと写真の話をしている。

Without meaning to, the conversation drifts back to photography, or rather, it never really left.

【臨在】は、写真集でありながら言葉の印象が強い。「元々は物語を書くのが好きで。幼い時から物語や小説を書いていました。だから今、伝えたいことを写真という媒体を使って表現しているイメージです。そういった意味で、僕は写真家というより、表現者でありたいのかもしれません」と語る。

For a photo book, Rinzai leaves an unusually strong impression of language. "I originally loved writing stories. I've been writing stories and novels since I was little. So for me, it's less that I'm a photographer and more that I'm using photography as a medium to express what I want to say. In that sense, maybe I'd rather be an expressive artist than a photographer," he says.

彼には"見せたい"より"伝えたい"が先にある。押し付けることのない、静かな主張。主張というより、問いに近いかもしれない。

For him, wanting to tell comes before wanting to show. It's a quiet assertion, one that never pushes itself on you, closer, maybe, to a question than a statement.

「僕の敬愛する詩人・山尾三省が、"すべての詩的なものは童話的でなければならない"といっていて。万人が見れるものであれということだと思います。【臨在】も万人に見やすいことを意識しました。伝わっても伝わらなくても、その人の心に入って感情をちょっと揺らせたら」。

"Sanshō Yamao, a poet I deeply admire, once said that everything poetic must also be like a fairy tale. I think that means it should be something anyone can access. With Rinzai, too, I wanted it to be easy for anyone to take in. Whether or not it actually gets through to someone, if it can just enter their heart and shift their feelings a little, that's enough."

自分が多くの言葉や音楽に導かれたように、彼自身もまた次世代に継承していきたいと言う。継承したいものはずばり、"いい心"だ。

Just as he himself has been guided by countless words and pieces of music, he says he wants to pass something on to the next generation, too. What he wants to pass on, quite simply, is a good heart.

「僕の作品を見て、心がいい方向に向かってくれる。いい方向じゃなくとも、感情を少し動かしたり、自分もこうありたいなと思ってくれる人が増えてくれたら、それだけで、僕は」

"If seeing my work turns someone's heart in a good direction, that's enough. Or even if it's not exactly a 'good' direction, if it just moves something in them a little, makes them think, I'd like to be like that, if more people felt that way, that alone would be enough for me."

相変わらずのまっすぐな眼差しと飾り気のない言葉に、ついまた目をそらしてしまうのは、こちらの心の純度が追いついていないからなのかもしれない。

His gaze is as direct as ever, his words as unadorned, and I find myself looking away again. Maybe it's because the purity of my own heart simply hasn't caught up to his.

きっと彼はどんどん変わるし、変わらない。世界が溺れそうなほど移ろっても、どんな世界でも、彼は美しい光を見つけることができるだろう。

He will surely keep changing, and yet, he won't change at all. However much the world shifts, drowning in its own flux, in whatever world he finds himself, he'll always be able to find a beautiful light.