history: a short story of postwar photography

The post war history of photography begins with the emergence of photo-realism movement promoted by the magazine Camera. Ken Domon was the first photographer to break away from romantic convention and start studying the new conditions Japan found itself in. It was his camera that focused on the changes of common people's lives after the war. Soon other followed and the tendency to catch postwar distress as street children or war veterans became so popular that it was named beggar photography.

Domon Ken, Hiroshima, 1958

Fukushima Kikujiro, Homeless people in front
of the A-Bomb Dome in Hiroshima, late 1940s.

Intense political confrontation over the revision of U.S. Japan Security Treaty (ANPO) delivered an electrifying stimulus to Japanese photographers who begun to explore new documentary styles that examines social conditions through photography. The most productive photographer of this period was probably Nagano Shigeichi, who made his name with a year-long series called Topical Photo Reportage, in which he studied different aspects of contemporary society.

Nagano Shigeichi, White collar workers at 5 P.M., 1959

In 1959 Narahara Ikko, Tomatsu Shomei, Hosoe Eikoh, Kawada Kikuji, Sato Akira and Tanno Akira formed a photographer's group called Vivo that changed the face of post war photography. They were called image generation and they believe in autonomous will of the photographer and the independence of the image from the storytelling. Vivo functioned as a cooperative office and the darkroom for the six photographers each perusing his own individual mode of expression.

Kawada Kikuji, The Japanese National Flag, from the series The Map, 1960-65

Hosoe Eiko, Ordeal by Roses, 1963

It was undoubtedly Tomatsu Shomei, who developed the richest personal realm of photography during this period. He produced several photographic series. Among others were Occupation (1959), Chewing Gum and Chocolate (1966), which exposed the influences of the US occupying forces and of American military and popular culture on Japanese society, two series of photographs – Protest, Tokyo (1969) and Eros, Tokyo (1969), which recorded turbulent youth cultural changes of the time, and Oh! Shinjuku (1969). 

Shomei Tomatsu, Prostitute, Nagoya, 1958

His most famous series though is Nagasaki 11:02 (1961) which was commissioned by the Japan Council Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs to document the effects of the A-bomb on the city of Nagasaki and on its inhabitants fifteen years after the horrific atomic bombing. The series is named after the photo of a watch that was dug up 0.7km from the epicenter of the explosion and which stopped at the exact moment the bomb fell: 11:02 a.m on the 9th of August 1945. His work was quite distinct from other photography of the aftermath. His photograph of bottle melted by the intense radiation of the bomb and close-up faces of the victims with keloid scars are very powerful and unsettling up to date.

Shomei Tomatsu, Hibakusha.
Tsyuo Kataoka, Nagasaki, 1961

Far from new developments, one photographer carried on his unique activities on the remote Japan Sea cost, beginning before the war and continuing into the postwar era. This photographer was Ueda Shoji.

Ueda Shoji, My wife in the dunes, 1950

In the late 1960s. Japanese photography was invigorated by the emergence of new artists. In November 1968, Taki Koji, Nakahira Takuma, Takanashi Yutaka, Okada Takahiko, and later Moriyama Daido established a small magazine entitled Provoke. Their photographs, fragmented images of filthy areas and forgotten back allies, completely demolished the established aestetics and grammar of photography. They were rough, blurred, and out-of-focus. Even though the life of the collective was short, its influence long lasting especially Moriyama Daido sharp physiological vision, which he himself called the eyes of a dog spawn many imitators.

Moriyama Daido, Shinjuku Station from Japan: A Photo Theatre 1968

Moriyama Daido, Stray dog, Misawa, 1971

Adapted from History of Japanese Photography

history: a short story of 1970s.

Tomatsu Shomei, Untitled from the series Protest, Tokyo, 1969

Performance art along with the students' riots was an integral part of the urban fabric in the late 1960s. The so called angura (short for underground) presenting plays full of politics and sexual perversions was in full bloom. It was ruled by Tenjo Sajiki Theatre founded by Terayama Shuji and Red Tent, founded by Kara Juro. Sometimes the butoh dance, pioneered by Hijikata Tatsumi in 1959, spilled out onto the streets from the dance halls. 

Hosoe Eiko, Kamaitachi sakuhin, no.5, 1968

This emergence of performance art as the primary means of expression for the avant garde artists had been documented by Nagano Chiaki in his recently unearthed film Some Young People. Produced right before 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the film shows a typical work day in Tokyo at different times of the day with the background music of the popular song, Shiawase nara te o tatakou (If you're happy and you know it clap your hands). Though it may seem that the film depicts peaceful and happy times brought by Japan's remarkable postwar economic boost, it is filled with ant-institutional subversive messages conveyed by young artists, who detested the shallow everyday happiness and attempted to disrupt it with their guerilla performances. The film features some forgotten performances by Ono, Neo Dada, Zero Jingen and Sightseeing Art Research Institute (Nakamura Hiroshi and Tateishi Koichi) which were organized as a series of outdoor and indoor exhibitions titled Off Museum. Continue reading

Zero Jigen, Crawling Ritual, still form Nagano Chiaki Some Young People, 1964

An exploration of 'outside' the museum continued on either collective or individual basis. A series of memorable projects were produced by The Play, an Osaka-based collective led by Ikemizu Keiichi, whose annual summer projects included Voyage: Happening in the Egg in 1968 (throwing a gigantic fibre glass into the Pacific Ocean hoping it reaches American coast), Current of Contemporary Art in 1969 (travelling downstream from Kyoto to Osaka on a Styrofoam raft), Sheep in 1970 (walking with the heard of sheep from Kyoto to Osaka), Ie: Play have a house (1972) and Thunder that began in 1977, the same year Walter de Maria created his Lighting Field.

The Play, Voyage: Happening in the egg, 1968

The Play, Current of Contemporary Art, 1969, photo by Higuchi Shigeru, Courtesy of Ikemizu Keiichi

The Play, Ie: Play have a house, 1972

Somewhere in the middle of the decade, the object-based works of Anti-Art, which emerged in Japan in late 1950s. and thrived in early 1960s., was replaced now by Non-Art, which lasted throughout the decade and whose credo was: not making. That new tendency was typically pursued by the artists of conceptualism, Mono-ha and Bikyoto.

Significant artistic, cultural and social events seemed to culminate in 1970. During two weeks in May of 1970, visitors to Tokyo Biennale titled Between Man and Matter held in Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum encountered an unexpected view, there was not much to look at even though the exhibition presented works of forty artists from America, Europe and Japan. And it was not that nothing was on view, although two rooms were actually empty, one of which titled My Own Death by the pioneering Japanese conceptual artist Matsuzawa Yutaka, but that art had changed significantly.

Matsuzawa Yutaka, My own death, 1970

Kawara On, Today, Jan.1st-Mar.31, 1970

Katsuhiko Narita, Sumi 7-22, 1970

Horikawa Michio, The Nakanomata River Plan-13, 1970

Takamatsu Jiro, Sixteen Onenesses, 1970

In the same year Osaka, second largest city after Tokyo, hosted Expo'70, which drew Metabolist architects and numerous artists on international stage. At the same time Japan witnessed yet again a flare of anti-govermental protests, incited by second renewal of ANPO treaty, as evocatively captured by late photographer Tomatsu Shomei in his series Protests, Tokyo. On November 25, 1970, Mishima and four members of his private militia entered the headquarters of the Japanese Self-Defence Forces trying to persuade them to restore military imperialism and when his plan failed he committed seppuku concluding the turbulent 1960s. with a spectacular death.