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maira shimada 嶋田舞良馨
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shimada.maira@gmail.com
@shima___kei
maira shimada
嶋田舞良馨

When You Call My Name
Curated by Nikkei Australia


Curated by Nikkei Australia, When You Call My Name is

“a collaborative project honouring civilians who were brought from Southeast Asia, Pacific Islands, and across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand as ‘Japanese enemy aliens’ to be interned in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand during WWII, and died during internment." 

                    - Mayu Kanamori on behalf of When You Call My Name team, August 2025


Stills from 'Sing-Song' (2025)


Sing-Song (2025)
 Digital video, 5 min.

Sing-Song is a work about civilian internee ETO Hiromu b. 1/5/1895 d. 20/12/1945.

Eto Hiromu was born in Kumamoto prefecture, Japan’s south, in the year of the wood sheep. Emigrating to New Caledonia, (presumably recruited on contract with other Japanese people), he was a Christian, and when ‘captured’ was working as a carpenter. He had a brother still in Kumamoto, and was single without children. Two weeks after France declared war on Japan he was shipped to Eora on the Cap des Palmes. He handed 25-30 francs to authorities and was transferred between camps in SA until his death at 50 in camp hospital from peritonitis at 5pm, 20/12/1945, 16 weeks after WWII ended. He was buried at Barmera War Cemetery, Ngawadj Country, and later relocated to Cowra, Wiradjuri Country.
Of all the facts one can unearth it was his character I wanted to know, which of course survives official documentation but isn’t straightforwardly found. I sought every divine and astrological reading of him possible, but the websites wouldn’t let me search further back than 1900. In the end I picture him singing, telling stories. He had no kids—I picture him playing with other kids in Noumea. He had no kids—there was no one to look for him. ‘Sing-song’ reworks the identity as recorded by the Government’s bleak description into Eto’s own wordplay. Who gets to tell about the cut on his left hand? What kind of voice is it? Who thinks of him now?





*For more info and to watch the full video work ‘Sing-Song’ please click on the links below


Project Home Page ︎

Artwork Page for Maira Shimada / Eto Hiromu ︎



Artist’s Note



Spoken dialects differ greatly in Japan, especially pre-modern Japan. Since Eto Hiromu comes from Kumamoto, it was important to me to have his voiceover done in Kumamoto dialect.

I asked a friend from Kumamoto to edit the narration to dialect in writing, but she couldn’t do the voiceover since I wanted the voice to sound like a middle-aged man as Eto would have been at the time of incarceration. I asked around for a voice, fathers of friends...dead ends all over. Either people weren’t confident or willing, or weren’t from Kumamoto and couldn’t do the dialect. At the point of giving up on finding a man narrator I began asking mothers. No go.

In the end a thin line came through, one that I thought would surely never come to fruition - a friend’s father’s friend from Kumamoto, who’d never done any narration or project like this in his life, and who to this day I’ve never met or spoken to, recorded the lines in his dialect on his phone and sent the file over. I received it at night on my way home from the cinema and held my phone up to my ear to listen. I didn’t even know what he looked like, Kurisaki-san, which I guess was kind of perfect, since Eto Hiromu was presented to me as disembodied facts and no face, never a face to look at, even though he had a face and hands and a livelihood and all this memory that never was remembered. The hustle came to an end. I think it was important that it had been a hustle - we have to work to remember right? Have to work hard to do it right.


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