Slaughterhouse / Seiichi Motohashi

The first photographic book on slaughterhouses in Japan.

Motohashi spent 30 years photographing the slaughterhouse in Matsubara, Osaka Department. During this period, the old slaughterhouse was modernized, passing under municipal administration.

The workers who work there are "burakumin", a caste considered to be inferior to Japan, which from feudal times was ostracized from society and condemned to remain by the effect of social segregation and geographical. Their work is considered "cruel" and "dirty"; it’s a burakumin job. In this book, all stages of slaughter are presented. Three men face a cow. First they puncture the forehead of the animal with a pistol, in order to slip a wire into its brain. They crush her spinal cord so that the beast does not struggle. Then they knocked over to hang it up by its legs and cut its throat so that the blood would flow all at once. Once the animal is skinned, they cut the limbs, the head, the tongue, the chest ... Finally, they are the event to bring down the intestines. All in thirty minutes, and in one knife. Then the women wash and cut the organs so that they are ready to be cooked. Only the head is thrown away. Their faces are those of professionals, display their demands at work and their know-how. They appear almost proud ... It is they who finally fill the plates of the Japanese.

The effect of monochrome makes us imagine the color, the smell, the noise and the lively atmosphere of the Matsubara slaughterhouse.

It will have taken ten years for this book to be published, in particular because the workers did not want to appear with their faces uncovered, and encourage discrimination a little more than they suffered.

Through his work and his book, Motohashi makes us think about the importance of where our food comes from. Slaughtering is not a special job, it is a necessary job, since the food that comes from it makes us live.