Panda watchers who went to the Ueno Zoo every day… and continued to photograph “1010 Days of Shanshan

I’m not a keeper, but I watched her grow up…

My daughter is a year younger than Shanshan. I had a strong wish to give her a panda-like name, but my wife rejected it. But I was able to get away with using a repetitive name. I also wanted to put “Xiang” in the name Xiangxiang, but the stroke count was not good, so I gave up the idea.

The person who starts off with an outrageous story is Takahiro Koji, a photographer who is well known among panda enthusiasts. In August 2011, I happened to visit the Ueno Zoo. He bought an annual passport to the Ueno Zoo by chance and fell in love at first sight with Sing Sing, who looked like a big peach rolling down his back, at the panda house. Since then, he has been going to the Ueno Zoo almost every day except for holidays to take pictures of pandas for the past 12 years.

Why is Mr. Ko attracted to pandas so much? We asked him about his deep fascination with pandas, focusing on his memories of Shanshan over the past five years.

It was one month after the start of photography that the individual differences among the pandas became clear. Contrary to the expectations of those around us, the pilgrimage to Ueno went on and on.

Mr. Koji recalls that if the pandas were just cute, he probably would have just said, “They were cute. But the pandas’ movements and gestures had a strangely human quality to them.

He said, “I saw something in their loose behavior, such as sleeping in a very disheveled manner, that I shared with myself. I was attracted to the gap between the old man-like appearance and the baby-like gestures. I was also attracted to that gap.

At first, both the company and his wife thought, “He will probably get tired of it anyway. If they want to do it, they can do it,” but there was no sign that they would ever stop. Fortunately or unfortunately, the company had always allowed remote work before Corona, so he finally brought his computer to work at the Ueno Zoo as a daily routine.

At first I thought all pandas were the same, but after about a month of going to the zoo, I began to notice the differences in their faces. The shape and position of their ears, the shape and size of the black part that looks like a droopy eye, they all look different.

It was in the spring of the sixth year of her life that she received the happy news that Shin Shin was pregnant.

Every spring, there is always news about how the baby panda at Ueno will turn out this year. I had let my guard down and thought that this year would be no different, but then, well, there it was.”