YOSHIO WATANABE
Japanese
Yoshio Watanabe is considered a great master of
architectural photography. He began his career in
photojournalism but began to specialize in photo-
graphing architecture after 1945 and the huge
social changes and physical destruction wrought
by World War II. Watanabe’s architectural photo-
graphy, centered around his documentations of the
reconstruction of the ancient Ise Shrine, however,
goes far beyond mere renderings of the built en-
vironment. The social, spiritual, and historical all
come into play, and through his photography
Watanabe captured the core of the Japanese people
and their ancient culture. Watanabe was also a
major figure in Japanese photography, and served
as the first director of the Tokyo Metropolitan
Museum of Photography.
Born on April 21, 1907 in Sanj, Niigata Prefec-
ture, Watanabe studied at the Konishi College of
Photography, Tokyo from 1925 to 1928. Upon
completion of his studies, he joined the New Photo-
graphy Research Society, which ranked among its
members the famous photographer Ihee Kimura, a
leading figure of the era who had been exposed to
such Western influences as the German movement
Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) and the teach-
ings of the Bauhaus schools in Dessau and Berlin.
Watanabe established his own studio in the Ginza
district of Tokyo in 1935 and worked largely for
such government agencies as the Foreign Ministry
Intelligence Bureau and the Tourist Bureau. At this
time he also joined the International Report Photo-
graphers Society (IRP). Unfortunately, most of
Watanabe’s pre-war period negatives and pictures
disappeared in the bombing during World War II.
What is known of this period is not limited to
architecture. He worked as a theater photographer
and made several photojournalistic reports. His
hauntingPortrait of a Girl, in which Watanabe
offers the portrait of his sister, attempts to capture
the essence of feminine sensuality through its com-
position, framing, and positioning of the body.
From 1928 to 1942, Watanabe had also com-
pleted assignments for the magazinesPhoto-Times
andOriental News. Immersed in the effervescence
of new techniques and photographic avant-garde,
in 1934 he published inPhoto-Timesa collection
calledCamera Works, studies on graphic composi-
tion. In this collection, inspired by the New Objec-
tivity style and Western photographers who were in
fashion in Japan in those years, he focused on night
birds that stroll through the streets and cafe ́s. It
was through this series that Watanabe came to a
turning point in his career, with his pictures of the
Ochanomizu Station, his first foray into photo-
graphing architecture. He then photographed a
modern building erected by Shigeru Ito; these pic-
tures appeared in a collection of the same name. He
took an innovative approach, concentrating on
lighting effects as they were reflected on the white
walls of the building. He also chose an innovative
point of view that considered the architecture and
other three-dimensional elements as sculptural
objects. In this manner he created an atmosphere
enveloping the building while respecting the archi-
tecture. In brief, Watanabe’s pictures transcribe the
space much as would a person walking inside and
around the building, bringing out the architectural
specificity of each place. He adopted a method of
photographing, with minor changes, for his entire
subsequent production.
In 1937, Watanabe joined Ihee Kimura and
Kyoshi Koichi at the International Tourism Bureau
of the Ministry of Railroads in order to create photo-
graphic murals for the pavilion of Japan at the
World Fair of Paris. The same year, he published
Snappu shashin no neraikata/utu(How to Compose
and Shoot Snapshots), where he reflected on the atti-
tude to adopt when shooting photographs. In 1949,
he publishedThe Imperial Palace(Kokyo)andin
1951, another collection entitledTenno to kokyo
(The Emperor and the Imperial Palace).
In 1953, Watanabe became the first photogra-
pher authorized to take pictures of the Ise Jingu at
the time of the 59th reconstruction of the Shrine.
The Ise shrine is an ancient Shinto Shrine, located
in the Mie Prefecture, made entirely of wood. The
ceremony, which happens every 20 years, consists
of razing and then rebuilding the temple using the
same ancestral techniques and the same materials.
This site remains emblematic; its architecture sym-
bolizes, on the one hand, the essence of all Japanese
architectural creation and, on the other hand, aWATANABE, YOSHIO