Nature, 2nd prize
Sacred No More
Jasper Doest
06 August, 2017
Three Polish tourists are entertained by macaques at the Utsunomiya Kayabukia Tavern, north of Tokyo, in a back room where visitors pay owner Kaoru Otsuka to cuddle the monkeys and take selfies.
In recent years, the Japanese macaque, best known as the snow monkey, has become habituated to humans. As the range of the macaque habitat expands from mountain areas to subalpine and lowland regions, the animals have lost their fear, have taken to raiding crops, and are often seen as pests. Despite macaques being officially protected in Japan since 1947, some local laws allow them to be tamed and trained for the entertainment industry. Once considered sacred mediators between gods and humans, monkeys in Japan also came to be seen as representing dislikable humans, deserving of ridicule. Commercial entertainment involving monkeys has existed in Japan for over 1,000 years.
Jasper Doest
Jasper Doest is a Dutch photographer who creates visual stories that explore the relationship between humankind and nature. As an ecology major Doest knows human life de...
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