On Learning from Kaneko Ryuichi, A Remembrance

The magazines that are reproduced in this volume are almost entirely from a collection amassed by Kaneko Ryūichi (1948–2021). He was known as a photobook collector but the volume of magazines, ephemera, and related primary materials he collected demonstrates the scope and depth of his research into the history of Japanese photography. In fact, the periodicals had their own library: a third-floor apartment above a medical clinic in Nishinippori, an area in the northwest of Tokyo. Most weekends over a span of time lasting years, we gathered there to hash out the contents of this book. My work would begin before arriving. Each time, I would buy a small box of chocolate, which Kaneko would usually polish off during our long sessions. He would call the chocolate his 燃料 (nenryō, fuel) for the meeting.

As each day’s discussion progressed and we would zero-in on a topic, either he would say with an almost eureka-type gesture, “There’s this article.” “There’s that article.” “Oh, it would be a crime to omit that, certainly.” And with each suggestion, Kaneko would pretty much leap off his stool, disappear among the bookcases, and return many minutes later with a magazine article to show for consideration. Kaneko had the remarkable ability to recall the publication year and month of individual articles, faster than searching through a database. His accuracy was so reliable that I would often tease him about not being able to also remember the page numbers of the individual articles. For Kaneko, the magazines were the object of scholarly research but, more importantly, they were part of his personal history. His interest in photography, when he was an adolescent, was sparked by the camera magazines that his father used to bring home. The materials that we reviewed on the small table in his library apartment were, in this sense, a journey back through his life in photography.

At times, Kaneko would become subsumed in the thick of explanation, while I would be lost in the dust, totally unaware of entire backroads of Japanese photography history that, to him, were well-trodden. I am immensely grateful that my rudimentary questions were met with earnest answers. It was through this iterative process that we pieced together the framework of this book. It is difficult to guess the number of magazines and articles that we looked at. But what I can say with certainty is that what was refined from that process for inclusion in this book represents just the silhouette of a tree-line top of an expansive forest.

Initially, I naively assumed the editorial process wouldn’t be so involved. What started as a consideration of the magazine within the history of Japanese photography evolved into an analysis of the history of Japanese photography within magazines. I didn't expect the book to take this long to complete. Along the way, life happens. Kaneko passed away suddenly. His work on this book was nearly complete. He had also finished reviewing the edits to his texts, but he had only just started checking my translations of what he had written. So, for the English translation, I’ve tried as carefully as possible to render every sentence to match the last version of the original Japanese text that Kaneko reviewed and approved. Apart from wanting to adequately present his final work, perhaps this hair-splitting process was our way of keeping those chocolate-fueled sessions going and continuing those exciting conversations with him just a little more.

Kaneko’s approach was a generous one. His enthusiasm was matched by his rigor and he was eager to help future generations learn about the world of Japanese photography. It is with this ethos that this book was made and completed. Hopefully it will encourage you and subsequent readers to spend some time looking at photography from Japan and appreciating it for what it is on its own terms.

Magazines were what first drew Kaneko into photography. With the publication of this book, which examines the role of magazines in the development of Japanese photography, a journey that was embarked upon some fifty years ago is complete.

Photo by Kazuhiko Washio

Hosoe Eikoh’s Color Version Barakei (色彩版・薔薇形)

Magazines were once the first and most immediate way for publishers to share news of new photography publications. In some cases, these promotional articles developed into editorial or artistic productions in their own right. In 1971, in the lead-up to a new version of Hosoe Eikoh’s legendary photobook Barakei (Ordeal by Roses) nine reimaginings of Hosoe’s photographs of Mishima Yukio appeared in an issue of art magazine The Geijutsu Seikatsu. These images became a separate, magazine-only version of the book.

芸術生活
1971年1月号
芸術生活社
オフセット印刷
pp. 9–21

The Geijutsu Seikatsu
January 1971
Geijutsu Seikatsu-sha, Tokyo
Offset printing
pp. 9–21

Hosoe Eikoh’s legendary photobook Barakei (薔薇刑, Ordeal by Roses) was first published in 1963 by Shūeisha, Tokyo. Eight years later, in 1971, Shūeisha published a remastered version of the book with a new format and improved printing. The deluxe box that housed the new edition was designed by Yokoo Tadanori, who shared a close artistic and personal connection with the subject of Hosoe’s photography, novelist Mishima Yukio. Spread lengthwise across the interior of the box is a line drawing by Yokoo based on one of the images in the book. The figure’s form is colored with a metallic ink, which has no tonal gradient. Already at this time, Yokoo was a master of manipulating offset printing and using an inordinate number of printing plates to create his posters. The interplay and choice of color in this design represents Yokoo working at the height of his powers. Tipped into an embossed area on the front cover of the book’s case is another colored version of Hosoe’s photography, an image that was generated by printing plate specialist Kokubun Masao. Different in approach from Yokoo’s technique, Kokubun’s reworking of Hosoe’s black-and-white photograph is given color as a part of the offset printing plate-making separation process. While the process is highly technical, Hosoe refers to it as “magic,” underscoring the marvel of Kokubun’s work to create color value where there was once none. Alchemy may have been a more apt choice of words but the creation of something from nothing does extend the larger themes within the photography proper, an impulse that can also be seen in the gods of Indian religion that hover over Mishima’s outstretched form in Yokoo’s box design. The 1971 edition of Barakei features only one colored image created by Kokubun. However, a set of nine of these color versions were reproduced in the January issue of The Geijutsu Seikatsu. In the accompanying text, Hosoe recognizes the reproduction of the colored images as yet another version of the original work and titled the set Shikisai-ban Barakei, meaning Color Version Barakei. This would not be the last time that the photographer would revisit and reconfigure the same body of work but this feature in The Geijutsu Seikatsu would be the only instance where this color version of Hosoe’s iconic images would appear in print or any other format. In the 1970s, Kokubun’s work in colorizing photography was of popular appeal and his images were used on various book covers of the time. —I.V.

The 1971 edition of Barakei, designed by Yokoo Tadanori. Image: Nippon.com

Following is a transcript of Hosoe’s text, which appears on page 21 of the same issue.
Original Japanese text follows the English translation.

About Color Version Barakei
by Hosoe Eikoh

One part of the Shikisai-ban Barakei (色彩版・蕎薮刑, Color Version Barakei) was made as a test piece for the publication of the redesigned edition of Shinshu-ban Barakei (新輯版・薔薇刑, New Version Barakei) to be published by Shūeisha. The special color processing that is used here was carried out by Kokubun Masao. He is originally a printing plate specialist, employing a technique that doesn’t use lenses of photographic practice, in other words, he is a magician of darkroom practice. This set of images was originally black-and-white. From these monochromatic photographs, using various filters and films, indeed magic ways, he generated these images. Even though this work involves a high-grade scientific processing, it must be called the work of a magician. Before commencing work, even though I made requests for a certain type of image to be generated, with just the smallest amount of film exposure and choice of filter, a totally different image resulted. For both the maker of the original image as well as for the magician of color, it is difficult to accurately grasp the color until the image has developed. Then a repeat of the same kind of work begins. The work on the first page will be used on the aforementioned new design Barakei published by Shūeisha but the others that were formulated thereafter are a different “Barakei”. What I mean by different is the original photographs are monochromatic so at that point they were complete in form; moreover, the old edition of Barakei was released in 1963 so, at the very least, as the creator of this work I recognize those photographs as their completed state. That was released eight years ago and the fact that the work was released in a photobook format makes these images a different experimental creation. This New Edition Barakei has a level of printing that wasn’t achieved in the old edition and, in particular, with the illustrations and external design by Yokoo Tadanori, it is all the more the definitive version. Apart from the images that were specially shot for the new exterior design and the removal of a few images, the original photographs that appeared in the prior edition are intact. The appearance of this Color Version Barakei is inextricably related to the imminent publication of the New Version Barakei. In this sense, this series of work has meaning. That said, I do not intend to attempt this kind of experimental transformation in all of my work.

色彩版・薔薇刑に ついて 

細江英公 

色彩版・蕎薮刑の作品は、その一部が近く集英社から刊行される新輯版・薔薇刑のために試作し完成させた作品である。ここに使わ れている特殊色彩処理は国分正夫氏によってなされたものである。国分氏はそもそも製版の専門家であり、写真術のレンズを使わな い技術、すなわち暗室技術の魔術師といえる存在の人である。この一連の作品はそもそも黒白写真である。このモノクロームの写真 から、さまざまなフィルターやフィルム等を使って、それこそ魔法 的手段によって制作されたものである。この作業は実はきわめて科学的な処理によるものだが、どうしてもこれは魔術師の仕事といわ ねばならない。作業に入る前に、こちらから要求するイメージの注 文はあっても、ほんのわずかなフィルムの露光やフィルターの選び 方で出来上りは全く違ってしまう。原写真の作品も色の魔術師も、 現像ができあがるまでは正確な色の把握はむずかしい。そこで又同 じような作業の操り返しが始まるのである。第一頁の作品は前記集 英社発行の新輯版・薔薇刑の表紙に使われるものであるが、他はそ の後発展して作りあげた別の「薔薇刑」である。別の、というわけ は、この原写真はそもそもモノクロームであるから、その段階にお いては完成されているもので、しかも旧版の薔薇刑は一九六三年に 既に発表されており、作者の私は少なくともそれが完成された写真 作品として認めているものである。これが八年前に発表されたということで、しかも写真集という形で発表されている事実があってこそこのような別の形の実験ができたという意味である。新輯版・薔薇刑では旧版で得られなかった印刷の完成度があり、特に横尾忠則 氏の挿画と装幀を得て、より決定的である。写真作品は新しい装幀 のために特に撮影した数点を除き、また削除した何点かはあるが、 前の原写真をそのままである。この色彩版・薔薇刑の出現は近く発 売されるだろう新輯版・薔薇刑の発刊とは必然的な相対関係にあるといえよう。これから一連の作品はその意味で「意味」があると思 っている。だからといって私は自作品のすべてにわたりこのような 実験による変貌を試みようとは思っていない。
*Translations from Japanese to English are by Ivan Vartanian

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Takano Ryudai, artists' book, [Pending 02]

(c) 2020 Takano Ryudai
Courtesy Yumiko Chiba Associates

Tomatsu Shomei, One Day Ten Years Apart

Momentous: Cloudy, Later Rain
by Tomatsu Shomei

Appearing in Camera Mainichi, 1970 August

Editor’s note: In June 14, 1970, demonstrations were held outside the National Diet protesting the 1970 Anpo, an extension of the security treaty between the U.S. and Japan, first entered 10 years prior.

Japanese poets possess a sensibility refined to grasp the changes of the four seasons and craft a line. As it rains, as the wind blows, they deftly set down their words. Since long ago, the rain has been sung over and over by Japanese devotees of the arts.

It is well known that photography, which got is start late, learned many things from haiku. The monthly gathering of amateur photographers was an imitation of the tsukinami (月並) of the haiku society. (Trans. note: These were monthly gatherings of amateur enthusiasts to share their haiku.) Photography owes much to haiku, not only in the way we assign themes at the gatherings, but also in the way we take and view photographs. In the world of hobby photography, even now, rain continues to be a favorite motif. And with that, timeless photographs are created every day of every decade. Rain and night are similar in the sense that their vision is wrapped in a homogeneous membrane. I know of many beautiful and romantic photos of falling rain that are replete of sentiment.

However, I am not interested in such art photography. My interest is in the present moment in which I am living, which is neither yesterday nor tomorrow, but this moment, today, right now.

For example, it is the early afternoon of June 15, 1970. It is raining. It is a downpour. The town of Shinjuku is a haze behind the curtain of rain. What is relatively vibrant is the asphalt sidewalk underfoot, and the dance of the rain that’s coming down in streaks onto the wet road. I thought back to June 15, ten years ago. It was raining on the night of June 15, 1960, the day Kaba Michiko was killed near the south service gate of the National Diet. (Trans. note: Kaba Michiko was a student who participated in the 1960 Anpo Protests against the Security Treaty between the U.S. and Japan.) 

The next day, when we demonstrated around the Diet building to protest the state’s violence, the sky was dark and the rain was falling steadily. On June 15 this year, it is just as rainy as it was a decade ago. But this year's rain is clearly different in volume from the rain of ten years ago. The June ’70 thunderstorm pounded the ground. According to the Japan Meteorological Agency, the amount of rainfall in the Kanto area from the 11th to the 19th alone is equivalent to the total amount of rainfall during the rainy season in a normal year. The world has changed in the past ten years. I, too, am not exactly the same person of ten years ago. Staring at the rain washing the ground beneath my feet, I think about the time of men who are living. People say there is no difference in the rain, but I cannot think of a photograph of rain as if it were a day in the life of a decade. The human gaze is, of course, wrapped up in time. Therefore, my photographs have a date.

1. June 14

2. June 15

3. June 14

4. June 14

5. June 12

6. June 15

7. June 15

Note: Camera Mainichi is a right-reading publication, meaning the page on the right-hand side precedes the page to its left. So, these captions when matched to the illustrations above, appear as follows: 2-1, 4-3, 6-5, 7.

Trans. note: In the first sentence, Tomatsu does not use the word “poet.” Rather he uses “person.” While in Japanese, Tomatsu’s intent to point to the average person would be understood by readers, in its English translation, it would invite a comparison of Japanese to others. To avoid that potential misreading, I’ve altered the wording. Also, macrons should be used in the photographer’s name, as in, Tōmatsu Shōmei, but for the sake of search engines, I’ve skipped doing so here.

1970年：くもりのち雨
東松照明

雅趣に富む日本人は、四季変化を敏感に捉えて一句ひねりだす。雨が降れば雨を、風が吹けば風を、たくみに筆舌に載せてしまう。雨は日本の趣味人によって昔から繰り返し繰り返しうたわれている。

遅れて出発した写真が、より多くを俳句から学んだことは人の知るところである。アマチュア写真の月例会は、句会の”月並”を真似たものであり、例会における課題の出し方にしても、また写真の撮り方や、観賞のしかたにしても、俳句に負うところが多い。趣味の写真の世界では、今でも雨の格好のモチーフである。そこでは、十年一日のごとく、時代を超起した写真がつくられている。雨と夜とは視界を等質の皮膜で包む点において似ている。降りしきる雨に情を託した、美しくロマンチックな写真を、ぼくは数多く知っている。

しかし実のところ僕は、そのような芸術写真に関心がない。僕の関心事は、ぼく自身の生きている現在、それは、昨日でも明日でもない、きょうの今、この瞬間である。

たとえば、一九七〇年六月十五日の昼下がり。雨が降っている。どしゃ降りの豪雨である。雨のカーテンの向こうに新宿の町がボーッとかすんで見える。比較的明るいのは足元のアスファルト歩道で、ぬれた道路に雨足が激しくおどっている。ぼくは、十年前の六月十五日を想いおこす。一九六〇年六月十五日夜、樺美智子が国会南通用門付近で殺されたあの日も雨が降った。

翌日、ぼくたちが、国家暴力に抗議して議事堂周辺をデモったとき、空は暗く閉ざされていて、しとしとと雨が降り続けていた。今年の六月十五日は、十年前と同様に雨である。しかし、今年の雨は十年前の雨とは明らかに質量が違っている。七〇年六月のドカ雨は激しく地面をたたいている。気象庁の話では、十一日から十九日までの関東各地に降った雨量だけで平年の梅雨期間中の総雨量に匹敵するという。この十年前で世の中はかわった。ぼく自身も十年前とまったく同じではない。足元に地面を洗う雨を凝視しながらぼくは今、生きている人間の時間について考えている。雨に違いはないと人はいうが、ぼくは、十年一日のごとき雨の写真を考えることはできない。人間のまなざしには当然のことながら時間がまといつく。したがって、ぼくの写真には日付がつくことになる。

1. 6月14日

2. 6月15日

3. 6月14日

4. 6月14日

5. 6月12日

6. 6月15日

7. 6月15日

Selfie from 1975 - Tatsuki Yoshihiro

A camera ad featuring a self-portrait by Tatsuki Yoshihiro, which ran in the Nov. 1972 supplementary issue of Asahi Camera.

If it wasn’t for the large type with the name Tatsuki Yoshihiro, I wouldn’t have known who is the young man in the photo. In the April 1965 issue of Camera Mainichi, over sixty pages were dedicated to Tatsuki’s photography. The feature was titled 舌出し天使 (translated to Fallen Angel) and focused on a young woman being emotive and playful for the camera. In many instances, she short crop and somewhat androdyous build make her seem that much younger. The original Japanese title shita dashi tenshi translates literally to an angel sticking out its tongue, which underscores better the youthful charge of the photography (as opposed to the more lyrical translation that was made at the time). As we discuss in our book Japanese Photo Magazines, for a woman to play-up childishness was not a simple matter of immaturity but possessed an undertone of revolt too. When that feature came out Tatsuki was only 28 years old and his career as a commercial photographer was only just starting to get its footing. Being young and energetic was part of his appeal for Camera Mainichi’s editor, Yamagishi Shōji.

When I was thumbing through this issue of Asashi Camera (November 1972), the first thing that popped into my head was the Fallen Angel photos and there is something about his funny pose that reminded me of his instructions to the model to act like a kid.

The text that accompanies this self-portrait is entirely about his discomfort in taking a self-portrait, which in today’s parlance would be close to a selfie.  セルフタイマーのジーという音、客観的にはそう長くないのたけれど、その間古今東西、偉大な画家の自画像など瞼にちらつき、なんとかならないものかと、はかない思いして百面相と相成る。

The beep of the self-timer didn’t take very long in real time but, while I waited, self-portraits of great painters of all ages from all over the world flickered in my mind’s eye, and I wondered if there was anything I could do to compare. 表情豊かな自写像など、どう想像しても気持悪い。Expressive self-portraits are the pits by any stretch of the imagination. 

This ad for the Canon F-1, which was marketed for professional photographers (or, rather, those aspiring to be professional photographers) offers us a slight view into what may have been happening during the shoot for Fallen Angel and the purpose of posing and posturing for the camera. It was silly because it pointed back to the lifeless and stiff composure of portrait painting. Photography, on the other hand, was a misbehaving imp. The double windows in the background are very unusual for Japan and I automatically assume that it was shot in Europe, which is a stark contrast to his pop-colored Converse shoes. (Maybe Rembrandt wore colorful Crocs when he painted his somber self-portrait as a mature man. We’ll never know.) Within context, photography in the late 60s and early 70s was a young man’s game and the name of that game was disruption. All the way at the very back of this issue, printed on uncoated stock that has yellowed considerably, there is a three-way dialogue between Taki Kōji, Nakahira Takuma, and Moriyama Daidō “The future of radicalism in expression.” (That was the reason why I bought this copy.)

If you are uncomfortable squinting, this is a transcription of the Japanese text:

セルフポートレート

うまく、かっこうよく写りたいと思う。

本人以上のものが写真にうつるわけもないのに、自分のこととなると奇跡期待し悪あがきする。

もともと仕事の写真より仕事終わったあと、仲間と一緒の記念写真に写真感じている。

セルフタイマーのジーという音、客観的にはそう長くないのたけれど、その間古今東西、偉大な画家の自画像など瞼にちらつき、なんとかならないものかと、はかない思いして百面相と相成る。

表情豊かな自写像など、どう想像しても気持悪い。

直立不動、無表情な昔の人達の写真見るたび人間が写っている気がしてならない。

カメラ前にしての一人芝居、てれるようではセルフポートレート写す資格なしというところが、この次はうまくやってやる！！

Ishiuchi Miyako: New York 1979–2018

David Wojnarowicz
Arthur Rimbaud in New York (42nd Street), 1978-79.
Courtesy of the Estate of David Wojnarowicz and P·P·O·W, New York.
Used with permission.

The first time I visited New York was in 1979. It was my first time in America and I went, along with Araki Nobuyoshi and his wife Yoko, for the opening of the exhibition "Japan: A Self Portrait" at ICP. My first impression of New York at the time was that it was dirty city. Garbage was dumped in the alleys between skyscrapers and the air seemed to be polluted. When we changed planes in San Francisco on the way, we had enough time to spare to go downtown before the connecting flight. But in San Francisco it we hadn't suffocated by the air. I was only in New York for a brief time but I was shocked by the bad atmosphere that soaked this city where everyone dreamed to be. 

　The exhibition venue was in a quiet part of uptown Manhattan, in an old brick building. After the opening, Yoko went to Argentina, where her mother was living, leaving Araki and me to roam around the city. On 42nd Street we looked at photos on the peeping machines for 25 cents, watched the porno Taxi Girl, and ate at restaurants. At night, we'd go to jazz bars around town where the darkness got darker. We strolled all the way to Harlem to take pictures but we didn't once feel afraid. That's because it was always the two of us, a man and a woman, a couple. However, after Yoko came back to New York, the Araki and Yoko returned to Japan, and as soon as they left, as a woman alone in New York in 1979, they had many horrible experiences and suffered discrimination that I can't ever forget.

David Wojnarowicz
Arthur Rimbaud in New York (reading newspaper), 1978-79.
Courtesy of the Estate of David Wojnarowicz and P·P·O·W, New York.
Used with permission.

 Since then, I've been to New York countless times, and every time I go there, New York becomes a cleaner and safer city. In 1996, I stayed in the city by myself for about three months and rarely felt afraid or discriminated against. And in 2018, when I was in Chelsea for a week preparing for a solo show at a gallery there, I visited the newly relocated Whitney Museum of American Art and saw the exhibition "David Wojnarowicz: History Keep Me Awake at Night." I knew very little about him except that he died of AIDS and that I had seen his picture of Peter Hujar's deathbed at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. I became frozen in front of one photograph. What is this?? In this slightly out-of-focus 35mm snapshot, a lanky man wearing a mask almost blending into the background of the New York landscape. He has lunch at a restaurant. He's on 42nd Street. Standing in front of a peeping show machines. In front of graffitied walls. He rides the subway. Sometimes he's got a cigarette in his mouth. He shoots up. Jerks off. Picks up a gun. The masks are all of the same man's face. Sometimes the mask slips to the side, or it's at an angle completely different from the direction of his body. The imbalance of body and face's (mask) position is strangely erotic and exciting. This was "Rimbaud in New York," I learned. The mask was the face of Arthur Rimbaud. A Frenchman from 100 years ago shows up in New York and gets photographed here and there. The reflection of the white face of the figure is painfully sad and humorous, emitting a strong poisonous atmosphere into the void.

　I was struck and riveted to the place by the strong force of imagination that Wojnarowicz chose Rimbaud and became Rimbaud, revisioning New York of 1978-79; the power of his imagination was printed in the photograph as a grave gaze that was a blow to my chest, riveting me in the spot where I stood.

 　"Rimbaud in New York" reveals the essence of photography, brilliantly breaks with the photographic conventions of documentation, transcends time and space with ease, plays the line between truth and falsehood, photographs the moment of communion between the body as an entity and the human body of the past buried in history, and thereby creates an eternity.

David Wojnarowicz
Arthur Rimbaud in New York (tile floor, gun), 1978-79.
Courtesy of the Estate of David Wojnarowicz and P·P·O·W, New York.
Used with permission.

 Wojnarowicz and Rimbaud are from different times, but the meaning of life and its relationship to death, and their radical and series thoughts on love are two sides of the same coin. Rimaud at 37, Wojnarowicz died at 38. Two men who, in the course of their short and intense lives, overlapped and resonated, leaving behind in these photographs a definite mark of life. And 40 years on, I receive them.

"Rimbaud in New York" reveals a number of issues in photography. Wojnarowicz knew to watch out for the peculiarities of photographic expression that are involved in the photography function to fix the past. This work expresses the meaning of essential photography. When I leave the museum thinking that in 1979, the same year I was in New York, I never met Wojnarowicz and I may have crossed paths in front of that 25-cent peeping machine.

 　The next day, in a state of considerable excitement, meet up with Andrew Roth. Of course, we spoke about "Rimbaud in New York." Then he casually brought out a photo book with a light blue cover and a Rimaud mask printed on it and gave it to me. It was the book Rimaud in New York that he published in 2004. There were many photographs in the book that weren't in the Whitney show. I was amazed and delighted, and I was reminded of Roth's approach to publishing, the quality of his work and his good taste.

 　Meeting an artist gives me great strength. From Wojnarowicz's work, the image that I could extract was, in a grand sense, the direction of love's intention and the problem of communication between people.

 　The New York of 1979 appeared to me like a miracle in 2018. The past is always in the present and the future always in the present. We have to make sure we don't miss that. And I am grateful to have met David Wojnarowicz and to experience the sharing of the infinite in photography itself.

About this blog

This blog was started as an on-going adjunct repository for the book publication Japanese Photography Magazines, 1880s to 1980s. Assembling an editorial structure that includes publications spanning one hundred years means that there is a lot of material that won’t make it into the book. This blog is one way of allowing for that overflow to be accessible to book’s readers. At the same time, it allows for some lateral expansion of the material that was included in the book, allowing for the discussion topics to get expand beyond what is included in the final edit. 

The blog’s title shashin_no_arikata is a romanization of 写真の在り方. “shashin” means photography. “no” in a possessive marker. “arikata” is most closely translated as “a way” or “method” or “form of being”. The title is a bit of a meditation on the approach of the book itself. While the aim of the book is to canvas 100 years of camera and photography magazines from Japan, the larger endeavor is to tell the history of Japanese photography. By limiting the book’s focus to print media, there are many aspects of the photography that we can bring to the forefront. Considering magazines as a media and looking at the photography as a function of that media allows us to discuss Japanese photography within the context of mass media, Japan’s camera industry, for example. It also allows us to discuss subjects that are about transitions of generation or the personal, individual stories of photographies relative to society as a whole. As with a couple of other books Setting Sun: Writings by Japanese Photographers and Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s & 70s, I’ve centered a discussion of photography around something other than photography and images, per se. 

This blog allows me to go to off on several offshoot topics that I feel will enhance the reader’s experience of the book proper. There are also several instances where I can provide expanded background information for materials and texts that I’ve included in the book. Moreover, the contemporary reader is more like to begin reading/looking from the book from some random page. This is quite different with how a lot of books used to be written, wherein readers were expected to start reading at the first page of the book. And the contemporary reader probably has a mobile device in hand, looking up somewhat while reading. Perhaps in accessing this blog, you’ll be able to approach the book with an alternative entry points. There’s so much to explore and I hope you enjoy that process.