The year after the war was the toughest for me.

The war was over, and I was finally released from my work that was involved with the military. I was not only saddened, but also at a loss about how to get on with things, all of which contributed to my sense of psychological turmoil.

Life in those chaotic times made one thing clear: I would need to work hard for many years to come. But work didn't fall into my hands, indeed, all livelihood came to a standstill. It seemed inevitable that I would become as destitute as a beggar. I certainly didn't have the means to build a darkroom where I'd been living, in the barracks. I wasn't even to think about what I ought to be shooting. In the end, however, this time of struggle brought me back to myself.

I had been working for Tohosha, which became Bunkasha after the war; it was really the only place for me to go at that point. There, my work was to assemble reportage on the everyday life of postwar Tokyo. In 1945, I was in charge of shooting, and in the following year I published a bilingual Japanese-English photography book called 1946 Nen rlki no Tokyo (Autumn 1946 in Tokyo). It elicited quite a public response, and the contents were well executed, but—without any recourse for dealing with skyrocketing inflation—Bunkasha closed its doors, due to this one book.

The following year, I paid a visit to Yoichiro Natori at the weekly news magazine Shukan Sannyusu. I was considering working as a photojournalist, so he hired me. When Sun News Fotos' former president, [Shogyoku] Yamahata, had been replaced by Kenichiro Matsuoka, they had started to publish Shukan Sunnyusu. I worked very hard, but the company's capital dwindled, and in its second year, after a suspension of publication, the magazine folded.

After that, I photographed the "industrial recovery" in Tokyo and took photographs of women; neither project went particularly well. And I still wasn't able to have my own darkroom. I wasn't even able to get enough to eat, let alone think about drinking.

Around this point, work at photography magazines started to liven up, and I felt my own photography was somehow connected to this. This was not because I thought of myself as a "fine-art photographer" (I have never thought this), rather, I hoped that with the advent of [offset] printing, I would be able to reach the masses. And work in photography magazines was now starting to be recognized on its own terms-as separate from recreational photography, but without the prewar elitism of art photography.

I started doing magazine work in 1948 for the periodical Camera (published by Arusu); my series "Shin-Tokyo Arubamu" (New Tokyo album), a record of postwar life, appeared in its pages.

Shukan Sunnyusu had not only been a place for the work of photographers to be seen, but living off their monthly wages had kept trouble at bay for quite some time. That financial safety net had been crucial. It had alleviated the difficulty of those who were trapped in circumstances like mine. Now, it seemed inevitable that I was going to become a starving artist. And my attempts to give my work a "picture magazine" feel may have precipitated this.

It's been said that my love of women was part of it, too. It may have been that-but more likely, it was the demand for my photographs of women, which had gotten beyond me. I was trying to make photographs of the spirit of women—whether through atmosphere or emotion-and it seemed that photography magazines after the war were looking for that spirit. At that point, the magazine Asahi Camera came back into circulation, and they reinforced this tendency still further. I was becoming distanced from news photography, and found myself taking what was for me the "easy route" Nonetheless, I still did not have my own darkroom; I worked in the darkroom of a Sun News colleague.

In 1950, Sun News decided to publish a piece about the revitalization of Japanese manufacturing-in part, as a public-relations vehicle. Four other photographers and I were assigned to photograph factories. During the war, I'd documented Kao Sekken and a number of heavy-machinery factories, so I felt confident taking the lead with the project. Not only did this work bring me back into my own, it also helped to kindle a new enthusiasm in me for news photography.

Not long before this renewal of confidence, a collective of young photo¬graphers had formed, called Shudan Foto. They held their first exhibition in 1951. For that show, Jun Miki managed to get photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson—¬his work on Matisse, and other journalistic photography—which Miki showed me before the exhibition opened. Cartier-Bresson's photographs shot through me—there's no other way to say it. I was humbled by them, and I thought: "I'd forgotten this. I'd forgotten that this is the imperative of photography." It made me realize that photojournalism was my true path. And at the same time, it woke me up, and gave me the courage to move away from the photography I had been doing to make a living. Establishing photography as an art form very different from painting was a dream I'd cherished for many years. Cartier-Bresson's photographs articulated this clearly, vividly. As someone who understands the difference between reality seen with my own eyes and the representation of that reality in a single moment through a machine, I was deeply jealous of Cartier-¬Bresson. But his work also made me believe in the possibility of expressing today's world as seen through Japanese eyes. I felt I had no choice now but to focus only on work.

It was around this time that I also had an opportunity to view W. Eugene Smith's "Spanish Village" photo-essay. As an expression of humanism, it is an amazing project—but it is close to the realm of painting, and because of that I was a bit dissatisfied with the work. I am a lone voice in the field of news photography, and I am certainly not denouncing Smith's work, but I was reluctant to think of these images as "photojournalism." Many general art photographers have style, and Smith's work is an example of this. I found this "regression" to painterly photography disturbing.

So, in order to eliminate any ambiguity for myself, I came to the resolution that the only path for me was news photography. In that same year, Magnum's Werner Bischof came to Japan. During the time that we spent working together, the direction of my photography was established.

In the following year, 1952, I was asked to document the farming towns of Akita Prefecture; it was my first opportunity in twenty years to visit rural villages. I was also able finally to complete my own darkroom, to acquire a Nikon and a lens—and to lay the foundations for my own work.

A farming village can be seen as a microcosm of our contemporary times. It easily lends itself to photography, revealing as it does the ideological gaps between old and new generations. I visited Akita five times over the four seasons of that year. The response to the work was not all positive, but the experience had given me a wonderful opportunity to photograph people.

On assignment from Ashi Camera, I documented Kyoto. I had shot Tokyo earlier, but my style and technique had not been really developed yet, and the series ended up not being well received. I think it is because I was only going after a particular "humor" of expression—which I consumed, as something that was "my own"—but I lacked the sensitivity to capture its true essence. But that sort of failure, for someone who is trying to mature as a photojournalist, can be a good thing in the end.

Around that time, I was getting sporadic work from periodicals like Bungei Shunju, which pleased me, but also terrified me: in magazines, I knew, the work must appeal to a broad readership. Soon enough, the number of photography pages in Bungei Shunju and other journals had increased to the point that they could stand alone. As the world's reception of photography continued to take root, that reception was reflected in the increase of image pages in such magazines.

During my time in Akita, I had gained much confidence in photographing people. Now, for the first time, I wanted to go abroad. I was going to travel to the other side of the ocean and photograph the people living there.

Part of my motive was to see Bischof again; we had spent the better part of a year working together. However, for financial reasons, that plan didn't come to fruition. Then, in 1954, the editor-in-chief of Asahi Camera came to me and said: "This may be only a fantasy, but are you interested in traveling abroad? No Japanese photographer has yet gone overseas to work freely. It would be interesting, don't you think? You're in good health—you can do good work." After two years, I thought that my hope to meet up with Bischof again would finally be fulfilled, and I immediately started getting ready. I made all the necessary preparations—except for learning another language.

As all this was happening, Magnum's president, Robert Capa, came to Japan at the invitation of Camera Mainichi. He had heard about me from Bischof. On his return to the United States, I was going to go along with him. However, Capa first went to Yaezu to photograph the people returning from the Bikini Atoll covered with ash, and then flew to the front lines in Indochina—where of course no one could contact him. That June, Capa was killed on Indochina's front lines, and Bischof died in a car accident in Peru. It was devastating to think that these two great photographers had died—although they had lived their lives inviting peril.

Just at the time when I was planning to travel abroad, this terrible news halted any desire to go ahead with my travel plans. For some weeks thereafter, I couldn't work, and the summer was nearly over. The editor-in-chief of Asahi Camera was worried about me, and said: "It's been put off for a while now, hasn't it?" But I did very much want to look in on Bischof 's widow, who was in Switzerland with their children, and to meet the magnificent Cartier-Bresson, to talk to him about photojournalism. I decided I would set off that September. Yoshi Takata, an employee of Agence France Presse's Tokyo office, was going to be in France to study, beginning that August. He agreed to serve as my interpreter in Paris, and became a source of great support for me.

Since my work is news photography, my goal was to photograph—without any bias—the life of Europeans as it is. I wanted to capture a true image of the dramatic shifts that had taken place since the war.

For me, in most color photographs that had been shot abroad—which I'd seen in slides and magazines—the colors were too intense, too gaudy; they didn't seem real. I wanted to reduce the brashness of the colors, to capture and express the tones that came naturally from life in Europe, and that I perceived as a Japanese. I decided to use snap photography to shoot my subjects: the life of the masses, the streets, people at work and at play, parks, people's daily lives. And l edited and sequenced the photographs to make them easy to understand.

Compared with Fuji Neopan SS, Agfa Isopan ISS 21/10 DIN is slightly less sensitive, but I like to use it, because the rolls have thirty-six exposures. I wanted to take along Neopan SS too, but the Patrone cartridge holds only twenty frames so I used the Isopan ISS—which I had used in my work for a long time. A Patrons cartridge is convenient for carrying around—but I was used to the thirty-six frame film, and knew that I can usually find my rhythm within the space of a roll I worried that, with only twenty exposures, I would miss the crucial moment.

So I had Kazuo Nakagawa mail film to my travel destinations. I can' say that Isopan ISS is suitable for outdoor photography, or for shooting unde artificial light; and if one doesn't know the conditions of the shoot in advance, I is a difficult film to use. But the ever-precise Nakagawa was able to understan what I neededjust from an abbreviation. For example: "35-8-60-G-F-U-P" stood for 35mm, f81/60, green filter, flat, strobe under, Promicrol printing. I wrote the abbreviations on the lead of the film and dispatched the rolls. These were the indications for printing-and also became recorded information of the shoot.

The sensitivity of Isopan ISS is a little weak, so to balance this I used ASA 100 under the same conditions. There was nothing else to do but rely on the printing and using the results of various comparison tests, we managed to counteract the limited sensitivity, and were even able to raise it to SS level. Whenever there wasn't a strobe, when using Promicrol, we used the initial estimation I'd previously indicated.

The second time I visited Europe, it was to participate in the World Assembly for Peace that was being held in Helsinki. At that time, my role was to express in photographs the people that everyone was praying for. These photographs were published in Asahi Camera.

Having the opportunity to travel abroad was a stepping-stone for me: the connecting point for much that would come thereafter.

I had planned to visit Europe again shortly after, but, afraid that it would be a mere rehash of what I'd previously done, I canceled the trip. I decided to stop and spend a year in Japan, looking back on my work and thinking about my own country. This was in order to fulfill my role as a photographer who would help introduce Japan to the rest of the world.

I am very happy that the medium of photography has flourished as it has, and that the mission of photographers has become so indispensable. It gives me pause to consider my own accomplishments as a photographer. Good work is not easy to produce, but I will continue in my endeavors.

Kimura Ihei. "From Postwar Japan to Travels West," Setting Sun. (Eds.) Ivan Vartanian, Hatanaka Akihiro, and Kambayashi Yutaka. New York: Aperture, 2006; 89-94.