KIKUJI KAWADA
Japanese
Kikuji Kawada was born in 1933 in Ibaraki Prefec-
ture and studied economics at the Rikkyo Univer-
sity of Tokyo between 1948 and 1955. Kawada then
took up photography, working for the publishing
house Shinchosha until 1959; a self-taught photo-
grapher, he never stopped learning new techniques
of shooting and printing. His first solo exhibition,
titledSea, took place at the Fuji Photo Salon in
Tokyo in 1959. WithSea, Kawada explored one of
his favorite topics: The history and the stories of
Hiroshima through its ruins and landscapes of des-
olation. Yet Kawada is not limited to landscape
documentation, and two series,Bijutsu Shuppansha
(Maps) of 1965 andThe Last Cosmologyof 1979–
1997 brought him to international attention. The
former series also examines the effects of World
War II on the Japanese landscape, the latter docu-
ments eclipses of the moon and the sun. Focusing
on luminous marks,The Last Cosmologyoffers to
viewers an almost abstract picture where changes in
atmosphere are detected as pure visual sensations
the viewer must perceive.
In Japan, Kawada belonged to a group, with Ikko
Narahara, Shomeı ̈Tomastu, and Eikoh Hosoe, that
allowed the emergence of a new photographic style
that countered the photographic realism that had
held sway among Japan’s photographers since the
1930s. This new style allowed the photographs to
elaborate their own visual form rather than following
strict conventions. Between 1957 and 1959, Kawada
participated, with Yashihiri Ishimoto, Shun Kawa-
hara, Akiro Sato, Akira Tanno, Shomeı ̈To ̈matsu,
Toyoko Tokiwa, Masaya Nakamura, Ikko ̈ Nara-
hara, and Eikoh Hosoe in many exhibitions called
‘‘Ju ̈nin no me,’’ which means ‘‘the eyes of ten per-
sons.’’ Within this group, six members (Kawada,
Sato ̈, Tanno, To ̈matsu, Narahara, and Hosoe) cre-
ated an organization they called VIVO, which in the
universal language Esperanto means ‘‘life.’’ These
photographers shared the desire to be free of the
canons of the photojournalism aesthetic by creating
original, creative images. While exemplifying this
goal, VIVO functioned more as an organization
that offered members exhibition and publishing
opportunities than a polemical group. After the dis-
solution of VIVO in 1962, an important exhibition of
their work was mounted, which marked the new
direction in the history of photography in Japan
that VIVO members achieved.
In 1960 and 1961, Kawada traveled extensively
around Japan and became a teacher at the Tama
Art University. His 1961 exhibition,Maps, at the
Fuji Photo Salon established him as a major figure.
These pictures are witnesses to the pain and suffer-
ing the Japanese people endured in World War II
and in the devastation of the atomic bomb attacks
on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and their will to
remember the past. In 1965, Kawada published a
collection taken from this exhibition, calledBijutsu
Shuppansha(Maps), where he mixed close-up shots
of stains, bumps, and cracks on walls of the ‘atomic
dome’ of Hiroshima with pictures of dead soldiers.
Through these close-up shots of many signs and
objects, Kawada evokes the defeat of Japan during
World War II. His famous black-and-white photo-
graph of the Japanese flag, crumpled, spoiled,
worn, and folded is particularly symbolic of the
war era and its aftermath. The flag was an essential
emblem used by the military government in the
1930s and 1940s to assist in imposing a nationalist
policy. As shown by Kawada’s picture, it also sig-
nifies the defeat of Japan. Yet, this image also
evoked the will of Japan’s reconstruction so that
the national emblem would proudly fly again.
Kawada pictures give specific testimony, as do
Ken Domon’s publications (Hiroshima, Kenbunsha,
in 1958) and those of Shomeıˆ Tomatsu (11:02
Nagasaki Shashin Dojinsha, in 1966). This publica-
tion is a key for understanding Kawada’s works.
Indeed, Kawada does not focus on an object for its
own sake, he chooses it as a vector. With a subtle
interaction of framing and light, Kawada confers
to the object a symbolic power to make it travel
through stratums of interpretation.
In his pictures, Kawada combines many levels of
meaning to create different approaches to reality.
This tendency was accentuated in the seriesSeinaru
Sekai(Damned Atavism) in 1971 andLudwig II no
Shiro(Castle of Ludwig II) in 1979. The first series is
based on and meant as a commentary on a Tatsu-
hiko Shibusawa essay entitled ‘‘Essays about Baro-
que Art,’’ and the two series together portray aKAWADA, KIKUJI