Introduction. Amateur and professional photography began in Japan almost as soon as the introduction of the daguerreotype by the Perry Expedition to Edo Bay in 1854. Foreigners took the first photos of Japan and the Japanese, but the Japanese were not far behind in mastering camera technique, framing views, and setting up their own studios as free lancers. By the early 20th century, Japanese photographers were in demand for newsreels, silent films, commercials, and newspapers. Practitioners of serious or art photography also emerged as did several specialized photography journals, such as Shashin shūhō (Photo Weekly) and Kamera (Camera). In wartime Japan, there was an abundance of Japanese press photographers and photojournalists. They took propaganda pictures not only for the military and news agencies but also for mass circulation newspapers and magazines and tended to keep their social conscience in check. Commercial photographers were called upon to record special occasions, such as weddings and graduations. In many cases, treasured family photo albums suffered loss or damage from massive air raids in 1945.

Japanese Photos. Japanese photographers carried on in Occupied Japan, though hampered by shortages of photo stocks and quality paper or by scarcity of cameras. They were at least free of Japanese wartime constraints but had to be careful not to demean the Occupiers or catch them in embarrassing activities. At first, news photos were a luxury. Few newspapers and magazines in the post-1945 period carried more than one or two. Even then, they were poorly produced on low quality paper. The professionals behind the camera were almost exclusively male. Moreover, in far too many cases, the photographers remain anonymous. We do not know their names, or what was going through their minds at the time. We cannot ask them why they chose one particular scene over another, omitted or neglected others, or framed photos in a particular way.

One of the best of the prewar serious breed of professional Japanese photographers whom we can name and whose output we can admire or critique is Kimura Ihei/Ihee (1901-1974). A talented man with a small camera, he was co-opted by the military for wartime propaganda but bounced back after 1945 with daily life photos of Occupied Japan (see samples on this site). Other older professionals of considerable renown were Hamaya Hiroshi (1915-99) and Domon Ken (1909-90), whose careers span Taisho democracy, Showa militarism, and Occupation reforms. Tōmotsu Shōmei (b. 1930) emerged just as the Occupation was ending. As for professional women photographers born within Tōmotsu’s age group, a recent history of Japanese photography names only Tokiwa Toyoko and Okanoue Toshiko. Born in 1928 in Kōchi City but taken to Tokyo as an infant, Okanoue was educated in home economics at a higher school. In 1948, she entered a fashion school and in 1950 shifted to Bunka Gakuin College to major in design. Her particular interest at that time was in making photo collages from pieces of photographs torn from magazines. She exhibited fifty of these in a solo show in Tokyo, 1953. Though her work was accepted in respected art and photography magazines, Okanoue left her career after marriage in 1956, returning at the age of 72 in the year 2000 with a solo show. Tokiwa was born in Yokohama in 1930 and graduated from Tokyo Kaisei Gakuin in 1951. She began to take photos as the Occupation was ending, joined a group of women amateur photographers, and by 1956 held her first exhibition, Working Women, in Tokyo. She continued to take an interest in women’s issues in her subsequent career. A search for representative photos by these two has turned up only a few examples. Otherwise, there seem to be no counterparts to such contemporary American professional women as Dorothea Lange, Marguerite Higgins, or Margaret Bourke-White. Lange photographed the roundup and detention of Japanese Americans in 1942, but only Higgins came to Japan and that was after the outbreak of the Korean War.

Published Collections and Limitations. Among the best sources of published photographs are Japanese language collections of selected images illustrating Showa Japan (1926-1989), including a large number of specialized volumes or special sections on the Occupation period. They contain a wide range of visuals in black and white taken for newspapers and news agencies and documenting daily life, the struggle for survival, and initial steps toward reconstruction. In some cases, however, even though we can determine the date of the photos, we cannot always be sure, without checking the outlets, when they were first viewed. The reason is Occupation censorship, which extended to photographs. Until late 1949, Allied censors were apt to delete, replace, or disapprove of newspaper and magazine photos of the black market, labor demonstrations, lavish foreign life styles, or GIs consorting with Japanese woman. Therefore, the full range of daily life and extent of Japanese interaction or social and sexual fraternization with foreigners, especially in the immediate postwar years, 1945 to 1950, are not always clear. For additional study of primary Japanese sources, there are approximately ten thousand black and white photos in the Gordon W. Prange Collection, University of Maryland Libraries. Partially catalogued, they date primarily from the middle years of the Occupation and are the output of Japanese news organizations and agencies, such as Kyōdō and Sun Photos.

It is essential once again to note that Occupation officials hunted down and confiscated Japanese stills and newsreel footage of the atomic bomb, retaining much of it for decades as classified material. Otherwise, Japanese saw their first large-scale display of photos (presumably removed from hiding) of atomic bomb physical and human damage in a special issue of Asahi Graph in 1951 and in exhibits of photos and drawings mounted by students at Kyoto University that summer. Only a handful of official atomic bomb photos had previously appeared in Dr. Nagai Takashi’s best selling book, Bells of Nagasaki, in 1948, but they were paired, as mandated by Occupation officials, with photos of Japanese atrocities in the Battle of Manila, March 1945. Photos were also allowed of American nuclear tests at Bikini in the summer of 1946. Back home, Americans, too, saw little media portrayal of the horrors of the bomb in human terms. The most famous published visuals at first were of the mushroom cloud or of vanished cities and not of human bodies. The Occupiers seem to have been less sensitive to Japanese ground-view photos of firebomb damage than to atomic images, but again it is not clear when these photos were first cleared for viewing in Japan. We now have access in exhibit catalogues and on the internet to the first photos taken in Nagasaki and Hiroshima by Japanese military and civilian photographers. Long after the fact, they have been able to show and tell us what they saw and felt in the immediate aftermath.

Official Allied Photography. In addition to Japanese sources, there is a treasure trove of official black and white images taken by the U.S. Army Signal Corps and other American and Allied military photographers. These are housed, together with film footage, at the National Archives, College Park. Another excellent source of official photos is at the General Douglas MacArthur Memorial, Norfolk, Virginia. Usually, the military photographers are identified on the backs of the stills. These photos have yet to be fully exploited as sources for Occupation history. Similarly, there are collections in the war museums of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Britain.

Amateur Photos. Wherever they can be found, collected, and displayed or published, there is another important source: photos of Occupied Japan taken by amateurs or semi-professionals, such as GIs and WACs, Department of the Army Civilians, visiting writers and observers, or by Japanese fortunate enough to own a working camera. A fine example is the work of John Bennett, an anthropologist who worked for the Sociological Division (Civil Information and Education Section) of SCAP. Over 100 of his photos appear on a site maintained by the Library of Ohio State University. Though not artistic, they capture a variety of urban and country scenes in various parts of Japan. They have the additional value of illustrating the later years of the Occupation at the grassroots level, 1948-1951, a period which has been given less attention than the tense opening months in 1945. Mainichi Publications in Tokyo put together a special volume in 1988 of color photos and slides taken by American civilians and servicemen during the Occupation. Additional stills by American and Australian servicemen who were stationed in Japan during the Occupation or sent there for rest and recreation during the Korean War have also begun to appear on websites.

Foreign Photographers. Among foreign civilian professionals, American and European, who visited Japan on assignment or lived there during the Occupation were Francis Haar, Horace Bristol, Robert Capa, Carl Mydens, and Werner Bischof. Francis Haar and his wife, both Hungarians, lived in Japan during the war and after defeat, until 1960. His photos show deep acquaintance with Japanese life. Horace Bristol, who worked for Life magazine and then for the Navy in World War II, had already done impressive work on Depression American and World War II, was in Japan for about twenty years, 1946-1964. Swiss photographer Werner Bischof, who died in 1954, did outstanding work in the last years of the Occupation. Robert Capa, also famous in this period, appeared briefly on the Japanese scene in 1953-1954 but was killed during a visit to French Saigon. Fosco Maraini, an Italian artist and photographer, was repatriated to Italy with his family during the war and returned in the mid-1950s. We can find much of their work and personal reflections in handsome coffee table volumes. But here, too, we cannot always be sure that we are seeing a representative range of daily life in Japan. In fact, a distraught Bristol destroyed a large number of his negatives and stills after the death of his first wife in 1956. Though Americans could ostensibly publish freely in news outlets back home, they also conformed to commercial needs of mass circulation magazines. During the Occupation period, Life magazine was especially prominent in coverage of Japan; Photojournalist Carl Mydans headed the Time-Life Bureau in Tokyo. Occasionally, the American weeklies Time and Newsweek included photos with news items about Japan.

Range of Photos. We might pause to wonder why, whether the photographer was Japanese or foreign, or whether male and sometimes female, there are so few photos of urban Japanese working men and women but so many of farm life, bare-breasted diving girls, prostitutes, geisha and maiko, with a few housewives thrown in. The temples and shrines and beautiful scenery from these years are all welcome, but what about urban housing, ghettos, minority peoples? Were factories and work places of little interest to photographers or simply off limits? Or was it perhaps because outdoor scenes were ready made for candid snapshots or the small camera? Foreign and Japanese viewers alike seem to have been preoccupied with the phenomenon of fraternization between GIs and Japanese women

Camera Boom. As the Japanese economy began to improve in 1953-54, more and more ordinary Japanese could afford to buy cameras. Moreover, in a protected home market, those cameras tended to be made in Japan, either expensive ones by Nikon and Canon or less expensive models by. These were brand names which were beginning to appear with great success in the U.S. mass market as well. The result for the Japanese was a “camera boom.” By the end of the 1950s, Fuji color film, too, was giving Kodak strong competition at home and abroad. In addition to the creation of a wide range of photo opportunities for amateurs and professionals, making candid shots of real life and chasing after celebrities became the rage. For years afterward, Japanese tourists would be stereotyped at home and abroad for possession of multiple cameras and for taking every conceivable type of shot. This was in addition to doing what they had always done—recording and preserving family and school events.