cal imagery, its purposes and activities include: (1) to
collect, exhibit, study, research, and promote
photography and optical imagery; (2) to organize
workshops, symposiums and film/video screen-
ings; (3) to assist in research activities in photo-
graphy and optical imagery through the museum’s
library, information system, and print viewing
program; and (4) to conduct research on the pre-
servation and restoration of photography and its
related fields.
The museum consists of four floors and a base-
ment floor, amounting to a total of approximately
7,500 square meters, including two photography
galleries and a gallery exclusively dedicated to tech-
nology-related media called ‘‘Image & Technology
Gallery,’’ an auditorium (with approximately 200
seats), a research library, a photography print study
room, a preservation and restoration laboratory, a
museum shop, and a cafe ́. The museum was mod-
eled, perhaps, after Western precedents such as New
York’s International Center of Photography.
The museum’s fourth director, Yoshiharu Fuku-
hara, appointed by Governor Ishihara, is also
Honorary President of the Japanese cosmetics
giant Shiseido Co. Ltd. Yoshiharu is a nephew of
the photographers Shinzo (1883–1948) and Roso
Fukuhara (1892–1946), the sons of the company’s
founder Arinobu Fukuhara. The brothers estab-
lishedShashin-Geijyutsu-Sha(Association of Pho-
tographic Art) in 1921 and later the Japan
Photographic Society, significantly contributing
to the development of Japanese pictorial photogra-
phy while assuming management responsibilities of
the company.
The museum’s collection consists of 18,529
photographs, 2,156 other visual works, and 50,001
books (as of March 31, 2002). The photography
collection includes William Henry Fox Talbot’s
early calotype printThe Open Door(1843) from
The Pencil of Natureseries; a noted early Japanese
anbrotypePortrait of Samuraiby Hikoma Ueno (c.
1860s);Omaha Beach, near Colleville-sur-Mer, Nor-
mandy Coast, June 6, 1944by Robert Capa (1944);
Tokyo after Fire Bombings, September 1945by Koji
Morooka (1945); Sentimental Journey by No-
buyoshi Araki (1971); and Robert Mapplethorpe’s
Self-Portrait (with Gun and Star). The museum is
also known as one of the largest depositories of the
photographs of W. Eugene Smith.
Since its establishment, the museum has been
directly subject to the drastic shift of the cultural
policies of the Tokyo Municipal Government.
Upon the arrival of Shintaro Ishihara as governor
in 1999, the museum became in danger of closing.
The museum budget decreased steadily after the
move to the current facilities: the budget for 2003
was approximately one quarter of the budget for
1995, amounting to approximately 533 million yen.
Beginning in 2000, the museum was allocated no
budget to expand its photography collection and
has had an extremely limited budget to organize
exhibitions. As a result, the museum has focused on
showing photographs from its existing collection
rather than staging comprehensive exhibitions
that require borrowing images. In addition, the
museum curators have been forced to raise funds
for their exhibitions, which is rather unusual for a
public museum in Japan. The budget restraints
have also made a significant impact on the
museum’s curatorial direction and integrity; it has
rented its gallery space to such an extent that
approximately half of the exhibitions at the
museum began being organized by other insti-
tutions, including Japan’s Agency for Cultural
Affairs, the Association of Advertising Photogra-
phers, and Nikon Corporation. This shift de-
creased the number of well-researched scholarly
exhibitions that the museum was known for earlier
in its existence. Instead, the museum began con-
sciously organizing and hosting ‘‘blockbuster’’
exhibitions with commercial and popular appeal.
As a result, despite the drastic decrease in its finan-
cial support and other resources and the changes in
its curatorial direction, the museum has doubled
the number of its visitors since 1999, to more than
413,000 in 2003. This increase in traffic has over-
whelmed the current facilities, which were not
designed to accommodate these numbers.
The museum has organized numerous retro-
spectives, historical and contemporary, and thematic
exhibitions, including Japanese and non-Japanese
photographers, but its strength lies in exhibitions of
historical Japanese photography. In particular, the
exhibitions organized by the museum during its first
few years are worth mentioning. The museum’s inau-
gural exhibitionTokyo—A City Perspective(1990)
was organized by Japan’s renowned historian of pho-
tography and curator of the museum Ryuichi Ka-
neko, which dealt with the formation of post World
War II Japanese photography through images of
Tokyo risen from the ashes of the devastating war,
followed by The Rise of Japanese Photography
(1991) that dealt with early Japanese photography
from the late Edo to Meiji periods, with a focus on
photographs by Matsusaburo Yokoyama (1838–
1884). Exhibitions such asShift in Japanese Pho-
tography: Expressions in the 1960s (1991) and
Japanese Photography in the 1970s(1991) contrib-
uted to a reevaluation of Japanese photography
from these two decades. The 2000 exhibition,TOKYO METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF PHOTOGRAPHY