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"Fantasy of Moon" by Hirai Terushichi, 1938

By Eunice Park

The words, “the Japanese aesthetic,” evoke images of pensive haiku-spinning, precisely-placed flower petals, asymmetric eaves, mono aware and excruciating sensitivity to spare beauty. It recalls an artistic awareness crafted by meticulous hands, elegant brushes, yellowed scrolls — not something as banal as a camera. Yet the exhibition, Modern Photography in Japan: 1915 – 1940, running from July 24 to September 30 at the Ansel Adams Center, clearly demonstrates how fit photography is for expressing this aesthetic.

The first camera arrived in Japan in 1848 with Commodore Matthew Perry, an apt symbol for the country’s new openness to Western ideas and technology. The Meiji government sparked a Modernist movement, mandating the restructuring of Japanese society with the imperative: “Knowledge shall be sought throughout the world.” The new artistic freedom mirrored the increasingly progressive social and political policies as Japan shook off its prior isolation.

The introduction of the smaller Kodak Vestpocket, which used film rather than glass dry plates, allowed a fervent amateur contingency to form. They developed a distinct photographic style called besu-tan, named after the single element lens found in their cameras. As they became more confident, their style moved beyond simple imitations of reality and accepted Japanese forms and themes.  his hesitant blossoming can be seen in the hushed progression of the works, from the single, elegant snapshots of Fukuhara Shinzo’s silent oceanic landscapes, to the deliberate mistiness cloaking the oil-paint-retouched images of Yasui Nakagi. The latter’s work has an Impressionist, almost pointillist feel, with no succinct edges and a balmy, timeless aura.

The serene lyricism of the besu-tan school was jarred abruptly by the 1923 Kanto earthquake, which decimated Tokyo. Out of the rubble emerged a synthetic, concrete city with the Modernist sentiments of the Futurists in Germany and France. Nostalgia and pictoralism were thrown aside in favor of precise representation. Hanoya Kanbei is a prime example of shinko shashin (New Photography), which declared, “Discard all existing conceptions about photography, and re-examine the photographic subject from a scientific point of view.” His photographs have crisp, clean lines, a hyper-active clarity that lends an industrial, manufactured quality to his subjects.

Just as realistic, but a trifle more gentle are the women of Nojima Yasuzo, captured honestly, with no coy flirtation or sense of voyeurism. The women are earthy, firmly grounded in an amiable reality, as rolls of flab and flesh dimples are unerringly documented. They are unashamed, exuding Gaian strength and proclaiming, “Here I am.”

Takayana Masata and Ohara Kenji’s treatment of their female subjects is more idealized, portraying what women should be like, rather than what they are really like. The docile, demure women are clothed in refined kimono. Their faces are dimmed, obscured, giving them the detached otherworldliness of goddesses.

In the mid-1930s the New Photography movement spread to the Osaka region, where the contradictory Surrealist branch was born. Instead of stressing the camera’s ability for accurate representation, they utilized photograms and photomontages to create complex, completely imagined worlds. Paralleling their European counterparts, they created a visual language based on psychology, emotion, myth, and fantasy, intended to reveal the subconscious in either symbolic or abstract form.

Hirai Terushichi’s work probes the inner, covert psyche in a disconcerting manner, especially with the image, Fantasy of Moon. A staring, startled eye perches atop a flounced skirt riding a rickety wheel, as a crescent moon roosts overhead. The apparently random combination has a nightmarish, fun-house quality, which disturbs the viewer.

Likewise, Matsubara Juzo’s juxtapositions of disparate objects, floating spheres, various other geometric shapes, crumbling walls, and eggs, create a Metaphysical mood, a la Giorgio de Chirico. One senses that each symbolizes something momentous, but the meaning remains hidden.

In 1941, with the imminent threat of war, art was no longer a priority of the government. Many photographers were mobilized to assist with state propaganda, a sorry denouement for such an explosion of artistic photography. These photographers are largely unknown, but increasing exposure of their images promises that perhaps the words, “Japanese aesthetic,” will include photography some day in popular knowledge, along with mannered, manicured rock gardens and spartan tatami mats. Clearly the stereotypical, eager-beaver tourist was not the sole shutterbug to emerge from Japan.