We were delighted to receive so many entries for our photo contest this year. I was impressed and entertained while judging the results of everyone's efforts, and I am grateful for that. Among them, the three works selected for the Grand Prize and the runner-up prize were outstanding works.

However, what bothers me is that even though the number of selected locations has increased each time, the locations or properties that are featured tend to be relatively easy to photograph and produce a certain level of work. Moreover, many of the scenes are similar. I would like you to take a step further and find the good points of Hokkaido Heritage that suit your eyes, and make an effort to impress the viewers.

This time, I noticed more smartphone photos than ever before. I was particularly surprised to see about 20 photos of the same location with almost the same pattern. I think you should submit photos that you have chosen yourself. The eye for selection is also important. We expect the number of smartphone photos to increase in the future, so please be considerate.

I read many tanka poems related to Hokkaido heritage this time, and all of the ones I felt were excellent were not limited to the perspective of a tourist. They do not regard Hokkaido heritage and scenery as stimuli unrelated to one's daily life. They regard them as part of the world in which one lives, and seek sincere dialogue with them. I decided to positively evaluate works that have this tendency.

I really like the works of the haiku poet Kubota Mantaro, who depicts the atmosphere of Tokyo's fading downtown area, but he didn't write those works with the intention of making the downtown area a tourist attraction. He simply had a favorite landscape, and while he wanted to capture it in words, the tourist value of the downtown area was added as a result. For the tanka poems for Hokkaido Heritage this time, we chose those that give a sense of his sincere love for the landscape.

The tourist aspect of the story just comes later. Tanka is the simplest form of dialogue drama, and sometimes it depicts a conversation with something other than a human.

When you think about it, tanka is quite interesting and easy to write, don't you think?