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Post-war Japanese PhotographyLecture at SFMOMA on 15
th
of September, 2008
Lecture on Post-war Japanese Photography
Mika KobayashiI gave this lecture as Patterson Fellow
at
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on 15th of September,2008
I have had great opportunity to look through the Japanese Photography collection that is composed of over 400 pictures by nearly 60 photographers ranging from the early photography of 19th century to contemporary photography.I was thrilled to see some master works and also some works that I have never expected to see here. Through theresearch, I decided to limit the times to the post war period, and concentrate on the works that has specific relationshipto the photo books.I would like to talk about the reason why I want to focus on the theme by starting with this picture(fig.1)by NaoyaHatakeyama taken in 1998. One of the reasons why I chose this picture is that I am familiar the city and also this picture have inspired me of some aspects that I would like to talk about history of Japan and Japanese photography.
(fig.1
fig.2)As you see, this is a baseball stadium viewed from above, and there are several houses and parking lots inside. Itmight look like a movie set, or some of you might think that it is a digitally manipulated photograph. This picturesomehow reminds me of a movie like “
The Truman Show
”(1998). But the houses were actually constructed by housingcompanies as a ‘ model housing showroom’ where people go to see and experience the houses before they plan to havetheir own houses built in the suburb.So, people are not actually living there. The way people buy houses in Japan is quite different from that of the US.The picture is a part of diptych and another picture(fig.2)was taken from the same vantage point, in the following year,1999. In this picture, all the houses are removed and baseballstadium itself is being demolished. And the picture taken later on in 2002(fig.3)shows the site after being turned into a hugeshopping mall.(fig.3)1
Post-war Japanese PhotographyLecture at SFMOMA on 15
th
of September, 2008
three pictures show the transformation of an area in a city and at first glance the fact that the houses were built in thestadium might attract your eyes and give you a strange impression. But as you closely compare the three pictures, youmight notice that the stadium was located at the rather crowded and cramped area of the city and the highway andrailway surrounding the stadium.Looking back the history, the stadium, Osaka stadium was constructed in 1950 by a local railway company like manyof other baseball teams and their home stadiums in Japan. It should be noted that the construction of the stadium wasclosely related with the re-development of the city after the war. During the World War 2, like the many other big citiesand the area related with military industries, the area had been severely destroyed by air raids of the Allied Powers.During the course of recovery from the war, baseball became a major entertainment in the 1950s and people went to seethe games by the trains and subways from different areas but the stadium stopped being used for the baseball games atthe end of 1980s and eventually used for other purposes like rock concerts and events and then turned into a ‘modelhousing showroom’ where people come to see the houses by their cars.What I mean to say here by briefly referring to the historical background is that these pictures show not only thechanges of a specific area in short period of times at the turn of century but also the larger changes of the surroundingarea and Japanese society, such as economical growth, development of transportation systems, urbanization andmotorization that had gradually happened after the World War 2. It seems for me that Hatakeyama took these photographs with the eyes of geologist to see the layers of changes that had been brought to the area.The impressions that I got from looking at these photographs are somehow connected to what I got from thecollection. Meaning that, when I began to look thorough the collection, I saw the works separately according to theindividual intent and gradually I came to see and locate them in the layers of changes that Japanese society hadundergone. Also, as I see the different changes in these pictures by Hatakeyama, I am more interested in what the areawas like in 1950s and how the lives there have changed since then. It is quite interesting for me that some photographsreminds me of the things and events in different times and such association and imagination leads into telling the storyabout the past, which is part of what I try to do. Another reason for using the word ‘layers’ is concerned with the fact that many of the works by Japanese photographers are very closely related to book publishing and the individual images are meant to constitute a larger whole and each image is meant to be seen read within the layers of pages. The photographs stored in the collection aremeant to be framed and hang on the wall and seen individually, but in the photo books the photographs are edited,cropped and combined with text. The books are the collaborative works with photographers and designer and writers.So, if you compare the edited pages and individual photographs, you will see what the photographer means toexpress and narrate through the combination of photographs and text. The experience of looking at photographs in photo books is quite a physical and sometimes intimate one, you touch and open and close the pages and it brings aboutsensations that is quite different from what you get from seeing the pictures on the wall or the screen. With these things2
Post-war Japanese PhotographyLecture at SFMOMA on 15
th
of September, 2008
in mind, I would like to introduce the seminal works and photo books that I found interesting in the collection andlibrary, and analyze what photographers tried to tell us in those books. I made thematic categories that are looselyconnected to the historical context of post war period: 1) Memories of the War, 2) Theater and/as Chaotic City and 3)Personal Stories.
Memories of the War
(fig.4)As introduction of ‘Memories of the War’, I start with a picture taken by Ihei Kimura in 1953(fig.4)as anassignment of a popular magazine. Kimura is regarded one of the most prominent photographers in Japan, being activefrom 1930s to the middle of 1970s. This picture shows the remains of Urakami Cathedral of Nagasaki, located veryclose to the ground zero of atomic bomb dropped on 9th of August 1945. In this picture, he also includes the people andcityscape around the cathedral that had been recovering from the war in 8 years. It should be noted that until 1952, itwas firmly restricted by GHQ of Allied Powers to distribute the photographs that documented the aftermath of theatomic bomb and the air raid in Japan. This means that there were few opportunities for photographers to record andreport the immediate aftermath and disaster of the war and it took quite a while from recovering from the war and had atime to contemplate what the experience of the war meant to Japanese society.In 1955, an organization, the Japan Council against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs was established to fight for theabolition of nuclear weapons and photographers and journalists became to have more opportunities for covering theissue. Hereby I would like to introduce the books published in 1960s by two photographers, Shomei Tomatsu andKikuji Kawada. Both of them were born in 1930s and experienced the drastic changes of pre and post war in their youth. During the course of childhood, they experienced militarism during the war, and the occupation by AlliedPowers (the United States) after the war and became freelance photographers at the end of 1950s when the publishingindustry was booming in Japan. They were establishing members of photo agency called VIVO. They did a lot of assignment from magazines and in their personal works they tried to deal with the experiences of war and post-war inquite expressive and symbolic ways.3
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