This is what they call an editor's note!
Opening the cover and going to the special feature page, I was greeted by a double-page spread with a photograph of a lush mountain stream. It was a photo of Taro Tamai fishing for a rock trout. As I was the photographer who conducted the interview, I was the one who took the photo, and normally I would be satisfied with having taken a good photo and turn to the next page. But this time, I couldn't help but look at the credits on the left-hand side and gaze at them for a moment. They read, "Edited Taro Hirano Toshiya Muraoka."
When I attended art school, there was still an atmosphere of "job hunting is lame." Art isn't something you can master in four years or so of study; it's something you can only understand after spending your whole life studying it, or throwing it away altogether. Looking back, that wasn't the case at all, but I feel like there was a bit of a chicken-race going on there, akin to enduring hunger. Having studied "photography as fine art" in college, I couldn't imagine working with photography after graduation, so I just hung around. Looking back, I guess I just didn't have the confidence to pursue photography as a career.
Still, I had to work to make a living. Just because I liked the format of magazines and books, I thought maybe I'd be a good editor, so I started looking for a job after graduating. Belatedly, I interviewed with Yama to Keikokusha and an editorial production company, but was quickly rejected. Of course. I studied photography at an art college, so it's not easy. I thought maybe I had no choice but to make photography my job, so I found a vacancy at Kodansha's photo studio and was hired as an assistant.
So when I saw my name credited as an editor this time, it reminded me of this old story. And it made me feel a lot happier than I expected. I felt a sense of satisfaction from being involved in making the magazine, more so than my usual photography work, and it made me realize that my usual work was only a small part of making the magazine. Editing work involves an accumulation of small details, and is much more difficult to let go of than photography. Of course, I was just a guest editor, and more of a suggestion-taker. Without the professional editors at the Brutus editorial department, and my fishing buddy and ally Muraoka, this issue would never have been completed. I think what I learned from them this time will be very useful in my future photography work.
Now, about fishing. There are many different types of fishing. There are many different fish and many different types of anglers. BRUTUS is a general magazine, so we have tried to cover all types of fishing without bias, but we cannot possibly cover every type of fishing. Please forgive us if the type of fishing you are interested in is not introduced. However, even if the species of fish and fishing methods are different, the excitement the day before you go fishing, the feeling of merging with nature, the moment you come into contact with the wildness in the water - these feelings are the same no matter what type of fishing you are doing, and we hope that they are present in this issue as well.
