graphic style is characterized by a floating space, an
emphasis on texture that suggests a zen spirit in the
conception of his photographs, as can be seen in
Portraits of Literary Artistsof 1933. Nakayama
had worked in portrait studios in New York and
Paris, where he came into contact with what was
called ‘‘Pure Photography,’’ as exemplified by Paul
Strand or Albert Renger-Patzsch. When he re-
turned to Japan, he worked on photograms and
multiple exposures.
During the short life ofKoga, several essays on
theoretical and experimental topics were published,
further disseminating these ideas among Japanese
photographers. Publication ceased in 1933 for
financial reasons and because Ihee Kimura decided
to pursue photojournalism. The modern or new
photography movement revealed the fluid situation
of Japanese photography in the 1930s. The most
important club, the Naniwa Shashin Club, which
had been a leader of Pictorialist style for 20 years,
moved, for a short period, to the promotion of
experimental works.
Several smaller groups in the Kansai area (Osaka
and Hyogo) were dedicated to experimentation.
The Tanpei Shashin Club, created by Bizan Ueda
and Nakaji Yasui in February 1930, attracted
Osamu Shiihara and Tershichi Hirai, who prac-
ticed styles very strongly influenced by the German
New Objectivity. Shoji Ueda, a mainstay of the
Naniwa Club, was particularly inspired by
Moholy-Nagy’s Malereı ̈, Fotographie und film,
and was one of the first Japanese photographers
to develop a highly personal aesthetic, photograph-
ing his family as models in his ongoing Dunes
series. Sutezo Otono and Ei-Q (Sugita Hideo)
were the first photographers to explore the possi-
bilities of photogram, a technique pioneered by
Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray. Ei-Q worked on a
plastic approach to photography, combining paint-
ing and photography.
Also, Surrealism had been important in Japan
because it gave birth to a new photographic style
in the late 30s. Gingo Hanawa, Yoshio Tarui, and
Terushichi Hirai created the avant-garde group
Zoei Shudan. They used techniques such as photo-
grams and multiple exposures and printing to
describe imaginary worlds. The photomontage
work of Gingo Hanawa that explored themes of
dream and illusion and which he dubbed ‘‘Complex
Pictures,’’ is created with a collage technique, allow-
ing a broader definition of photography. With his
Hansekaiseries, Kiyoshi Koishi proved that he had
integrated and digested avant-garde techniques,
employing them as tools to elaborate his own
photographic universe.
However, Pictorialism continued to exert attrac-
tion on young photographs after 1930, carrying
this style much beyond its general practice in the
West. Sakae Tamura and Giro Takao, two young
photographers of this period who had been pub-
lished inPhoto Times, created pictorialist pictures,
modeled on Impressionist painting and infused
with subjectivity, that were considered as works
that forecast Surrealism.
Established figures such as Ihee Kimura, Shoji
Ueda, and Yonosuke Natori, with their adaptations
of Social Realism, a style practiced in Europe and
America especially during the Great Depression,
took up the visual vocabulary and the themes of
the German illustrated press. But in the mid-1930s,
the Japanese government, marching inexorably to-
ward militarization, took over these themes to make
fearsome weapons of propaganda in magazines such
asFrontorNippon. Propaganda, along with a film
shortage and government crack-down on the man-
ufacture or importation of photographic equipment
as World War II began, cut significantly into photo-
graphic production. Censorship was also practiced.
Ken Domon’s protest against censorship published
inNihon Hyoronin 1943 resulted in the banning of
the magazine, and the last months of World War II
saw the destruction of thousand of so-called ‘‘com-
promising negatives.’’ The war era also saw the
consolidation or cessation of publication of many
photography magazines as part of the general con-
traction in the field.
As with every aspect of Japanese life, the drop-
ping of the two atomic bombs by the United States
in the waning months of the War are an inescap-
able reality and watershed for Japanese photogra-
phy. The tragedy of Nagasaki and Hiroshima is
immortalized by the photographic accounts in the
hours and the days that followed the bombings by
Yoshito Matsushige and Mitsugi Kishida in Hir-
oshima and Army photographer Yosuke Yama-
hata in Nagasaki, along with some pictures by a
young student, Toshio Fukda, Seizo Yamada, and
Eiichi Matsumoto. From these rare documents
ensued many reflections about destruction and
what history cannot erase. Initially, there was a
ban on publishing any photographs of the atomic
bomb destruction by the U.S. occupation; this ban
was lifted in 1952. But as late as 1965, Kikuji
Kawada published a collection calledBijutsu Shup-
pansha (Maps)in which he mixed close-up shots of
stains, bumps, and cracks on walls of the Atomic
Dome of Hiroshima with pictures of dead soldiers.
Through the combination of these disparate ele-
ments, close-up shots of objects and numerous
signs, Kawada evoked the defeat of Japan duringJAPAN, PHOTOGRAPHY IN