1. Home
2. Publications
3. Specialized books

A Century of Japanese Photography

Japan Photographers Association; introduction by John W. Dower.

Originally published in Japan as Nihon Shashin Shi, 1840-1945 by Heibonsha. First American Edition.

The camera, that small product of Western genius, arrived in Japan just in time to record the first great onslaught of Western technology and culture, and was available from the start to bear witness to the emergence of modern Japan. From the first impressions of proud feudal lords and posing samurai to the final moonscapes of devastated Japan in 1945, this book displays overwhelming evidence of the power, daring, and rich- ness of the Japanese photographic tradition. War, art, news, propaganda, advertising, avant-garde-no area of the photographic record is ignored in these 514 carefully chosen shots. A Century of Japanese Photography illustrates for the first time just how the greatest non-Western photographic tradition developed and changed over time as well as all the social contradictions and historical ironies of Japan itself: the clan portrait of young men in samurai garb and the group portrait of their student descendants in Western suits and ties; the wholesome young ladies touting crackers, dry goods, or wine and their male counterparts killing abroad. At the same time, many Western stereotypes of Japan will be eroded by images that reveal women workers in the front ranks of May Day parades or the wildest surrealist experiments in photography blossoming just in the period of Japan's mounting prewar militarism. Never before has a photographic tradition been displayed in such breadth, with all its contradictory uses (and abuses), and with all its visual fascination so open for observation.

E-mail us to order