This comprehensive volume is a 100-year history of Japanese photography presented through a broad selection of genre-defining photography magazines.

Each featured article in this book is fully annotated, illustrated, and accompanied by an explanatory text written by leading scholars of the field. These texts introduce key concepts, terms, and important persons of this history. A broad selection of primary writings has been included as English translations throughout the volume. These writings and discussions by photographers, critics, poets, and editors provided a rich discourse that was essential for the development of Japanese photography. Providing essential background and context to some of the most iconic images in the field, such writings include texts by Araki Nobuyoshi, Fukase Masahisa, Hosoe Eikoh, Kawada Kikuji, Kimura Ihei, Moriyama Daido, Narahara Ikko, Yasui Nakaji, as well as writings by Tanikawa Shuntarō, Terayama Shūji, among many others.

With over 1,300 illustrations across 500 pages, this book is an invaluable resource for researchers and students exploring Japan’s unique photographic history.

Photography magazines were the primary platform for disseminating photography in Japan. Japanese Photography Magazines: 1880s to 1980s is the first survey of this history in any language, presenting an unprecedented exploration of Japan’s rich photography heritage on its own terms. Rather than portraying Japanese photography as a mere adaptation of Western concepts, this book offers a distinct perspective, providing readers with a solid foundation to comprehend Japan’s photography from a uniquely Japanese standpoint. In both content and form. this ambitious project addresses the critical need for an approach to photography history that transcends Western-centric viewpoints.

Starting with the earliest camera-related publications in the 19th century through to the end of the magazine’s golden era in the 1980s, this book immerses the reader into the work of well-established as well as overlooked photographers, representing a broad range of imagery and approaches.

Each of the featured magazine stories are accompanied with authoritative historical information, which, as a whole, provides the reader with a balanced and nuanced survey of this history of Japanese photography. This gives the reader a grounding into the core concepts and vocabulary for understanding the definitive characteristic of photography from Japan. Almost all of the stories that are featured in this volume are reproduced in their entirety, making this volume an invaluable resource for researchers, collectors, general readers, and photography fans. -Publisher

Text in English and Japanese