Abstract

48 “LOVE LETTERS” FROM A PHOTOGRAPHER TO HIS BELOVED WIFE AND THEIR YOUNG SON THAT TELL “THINGS THAT TRULY MATTER”.
The author of the book, HATANO Hiroshi is a renowned photographer and a haematological cancer patient. He received the diagnosis with a limited life expectancy when his son, Yu was 1 year old. A couple of months later, he started a monthly column on the web magazine about parenting, where he wrote his thoughts, especially on how the family of the three should navigate precious everyday life, in the form of open letters to his wife Yukari and Yu. This book contains 48 of them, written between February 2018 and February 2022. The author says “let’s make every decision by ourselves, we engage our brain and make our choices on how we live, how we work, how we spend, how we raise our child and how we use the limited period of time as a family, without being tied down to conventions or social norms". His messages are extremely personal, and yet universal at the same time, therefore touching our hearts deeply.
The book is not about his “battle” against the disease. Instead, he chronicles his everyday life, trips he makes, alone and with family, and conversations with his wife and son, a lot of them. Readers find the way he communicates with Yu a model of parenting. The column concluded recently since Yu is starting elementary school and Hatano thinks it’s the right time.

The book features photos by Hiroshi and Yukari HATANO. All 240 pages are printed in full colour.

Author’s Information

HATANO Hiroshi is a photographer and a heamatological cancer patient. Born in Tokyo, 1983. Following attendance at Nippon Photography Institute and studying under TAKAHASHI Tsutomu, an advertising photographer, he started his career as a professional photographer and married Yukari in the same year 2011. His son, Yu was born in 2016 and a year later, he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, an incurable form of blood cancer with the current medical technology. He published several books and many of them were adapted overseas, including “Bokuga kodomonokoro hoshikatta oyani naru” (Becoming a parent who I wanted to have as my own when I was a child) and “Nande bokuni kikundaro”(Why do people ask me for advises?).