Advances in equipment manufacturing contin-
ued. Asahi Kogaku Goshi Kaisha, the forerunner
of Asahi Optical Company, Ltd., the maker of
Pentax cameras, had been established in Tokyo in
1919 as a manufacturer of opthalmic lenses. By
1934, it had become a major supplier of camera
lenses for manufacturers such as Konishiroku and
Minolta. The forerunner of Olympus Optical Co.,
Ltd., Takachiho Seisaku-sho, had also been estab-
lished in 1919, as a microscope manufacturer. It
made its first photographic lens in 1936. Photo-
graphic papers were being widely manufactured
by this era as well. In 1928, the forerunner of
Minolta Camera Company was founded. Along
with several other lens manufacturers producing
innovative products, Nippon Kogaku Kogyo K.
K. manufactured its first Nikkor lens, which in
1936 was first mounted on the Hansa Canon cam-
era. The forerunner of Canon, Inc. was established
in 1933 as Seiki Kogaku Kenkyusho (Precision
Optical Instruments Laboratory), introducing the
Hansa Canon in 1935. In 1934, the Fuji Photo Film
Company was established. That same year, the
‘‘Super Olympic,’’ the first 35mm camera made in
Japan, was produced.
In the first half of the 1930s, at the beginning of
the Showa period (1926–1989), Japanese photogra-
phy saw the impressive burgeoning of the medium
also characteristic of the interwar years in Europe.
Along with the influence of European avant-
gardes, there was the development of press photo-
graphy or photojournalism, and the advent of
modernist design and advertising. Building on the
expansion of artistic thought and practice of the
1920s, institutions that could form the basis for an
academic movement, a counter-culture, and an
avant-garde were in place. Photography followed
the race for development of Japanese society in
general, and reflected the changing conditions and
the new sensibilities of individuals. During this
period, marked by two major disasters—the 1923
Tokyo earthquake and the devastation of the
atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in
1945—the medium entered into a stage wherein
there was the uneasy coexistence of opposing
expressions: the traditional Pictorial-influenced
realism, and experimental practices.
In the 1930s, photography bloomed in the illu-
strated press, which in part was inspired by the
picture stories ofLifemagazine, which began pub-
lication in 1936. Yonosuke Natori was the first
Japanese photographer to be published in Life,
with his images of Japanese soldiers. The photo-
journalists, however, were opposed toshinko shashin
(new or modern photography), whose adherents
mixed Pictorialism with aspects of the European
avant-garde. Modernism represented a decisive rup-
ture, a rejection of a pictorialist aesthetic that many
Japanese photographers were reluctant to make.
Fueled by technical advances, however, the modern
movement included significant experimentation,
which led artists to discover new possibilities.
Those who practicedshinko shashin, or the new
photography, included Kiyoshi Koishi, Nakaji
Yasui, Iwata Nakayama, Yasuzo Nojima, and
Ihee Kimura; they were particularly influenced by
the German movement Neue Sachlichkeit (New
Objectivity), and the teachings eminating from the
Bauhaus schools in Dessau and Berlin. They were
able to experience firsthand the European avant-
gardes via theFilm und Fotoexhibition, organized
in 1929 at Stuttgart, Germany and presented in
1931 in Tokyo and Osaka. This exhibition showed
the works of La ́szlo ́Moholy-Nagy, Albert Renger-
Patzsch, and many others. ThePhoto-Timesmaga-
zine, founded in 1924, had also begun to publish
new trends in foreign photography in the 1930s.
Innovations proposed by theshinko shashinphi-
losophy were spread via three important clubs,
each reflecting the personality of their founders:
Kiyoshi Koishi with the Naniwa Shashin Club of
Osaka, Nakaji Yasui with the Tanpei Shashin
Club, and Iwata Nakayama with the Ashiya Cam-
era Club. Another group, Zen ’ei Shashin Kyokai
(photographic avant-garde), was in part inspired
by Surrealism. In parallel, the Realist Movement
appeared with, among others, Ihee Kimura, Shoji
Ueda, Yonosuke Natori, and Hiroshi Hamaya.
An important magazine that supported the
expression of the modern photography movement,
Koga, published 18 issues between May, 1932 and
December, 1933. Graphic design and typography
as innovative as the photographs that appeared
were published by the magazine’s principals,
Yasuzo Nojima, Iwata Nakayama, Nakaji Yasui,
and Ihee Kimura. The first issue consisted of a
manifesto that urged photographers ‘‘to smash
into pieces the concepts of traditional art.’’ Works
byKoga’sthree founders are characteristic of the
shinko shashinmovement. Nojima, the head of the
magazine and the oldest of the three, had practiced
a Pictorialist style for more than 20 years, as exem-
plified by the 1910 photographTroubled. Waters.
Around 1930, he made a radical move to experi-
mental forms, as seen inUntitled, Model Fof 1931.
While he specialized in nudes and portraits, Nojima
consistently tried to go beyond the rules of these
genres. Kimura was the first to use a 35-mm Leica
to produce snapshot-like photographs of the daily
life of the working classes of Tokyo. His photo-JAPAN, PHOTOGRAPHY IN