Photographer Masayoshi Saito has spent the past decade shooting the rugged expanses of Sakhalin Island, with the hope that his images will create better understanding between the Russian and Japanese people.
Saito, 60, a retired local government official in Hokkaido, has had to overcome barriers to achieve his visits — both geographic and political.
Over the years he has shot around 20,000 photographs on the island. This summer he displayed some of them in a dual exhibition that took place simultaneously on Sakhalin and in his hometown of Wakkanai, in the far north of Hokkaido.