Avant-garde images in Japan – Wikipedia

Avant-garde and experimental images in Japan, mainly within the Nineteen Thirties–Forties

Avant-garde images in Japan refers to experimental photographic practices related to Japan’s interwar and early wartime modernism, growing inside and alongside the milieu of shinkō shashin (新興写真, “New Photography”).^[1] Photographers and critics explored new methods and procedures—together with photomontage, photocollage, and photograms—and tailored concepts and strategies related to Surrealism into photographic work.^[1]

Histories of the interval typically deal with the 1931 arrival of the German International Traveling Photography Exhibition (the photographic element of Film und Foto) in Japan as a turning level, coinciding with an increasing tradition of photographic magazines and beginner golf equipment.^[1] From 1937 to 1940, a short-lived zen’ei (前衛, “avant-garde”) second grew to become seen in some circles, however wartime cultural and ideological controls made the time period politically fraught and inspired substitutes reminiscent of shashin zōkei (写真造形) and shashin bunka (写真文化).^[2]

Rather than forming a single group, these practices circulated by way of overlapping regional circuits in Tokyo, the Kansai area, and Nagoya, linked by periodicals, exhibitions, and research teams.^[1][3] Figures related to those networks embody the poet-photographer Kansuke Yamamoto and different members in late-Nineteen Thirties Nagoya teams that developed on the intersection of images and Surrealism.^[2][3]

This article makes use of the umbrella time period avant-garde images in Japan for experimental photographic practices that developed inside and alongside Japan’s interwar “New Photography” milieu (shinkō shashin; 新興写真) and that later intersected with modernist and Surrealist concepts, in addition to with wartime pressures on cultural expression.^[4] It is meant as a cross-regional and cross-media class (linking practices circulated by way of magazines, exhibitions, and teams), relatively than because the title of any single group.

In this text, “avant-garde photography in Japan” is used to attach (1) the broader modernist present generally described as shinkō shashin (“new photography”) and (2) the shorter late-Nineteen Thirties surge by which photographers and critics more and more used specific “avant-garde/vanguard” language (zen’ei; 前衛) and arranged round analysis teams and associations.^[5]

Shinkō shashin (“new photography”) is handled right here because the broader interwar modernist milieu by which new methods, aesthetic debates, and beginner networks expanded quickly within the early Nineteen Thirties.^[5]

The Japanese time period zen’ei (actually “vanguard”) carried political overtones within the Nineteen Thirties, and sources distinguish between its use as a translation with proletarian associations and the loanword (avangyarudo) used extra narrowly for inventive actions.^[6] In Japanese-language museum writing on the interval, “avant-garde photography” (zen’ei shashin; 前衛写真) can be used for the late-Nineteen Thirties images motion related to teams such because the Avant-Garde Photography Association (前衛写真協会) and regional collectives together with the Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde (ナゴヤ・フォトアヴァンギャルド).^[7]

Under wartime cultural controls, sources notice that “avant-garde” language grew to become troublesome to make use of publicly; the phrase zen’ei itself was handled as prohibited in some contexts, and teams adopted various framings reminiscent of shashin zōkei (写真造形) and shashin bunka (写真文化).^[7]

Japanese names and phrases are given in romanization, with Japanese-script types (kanji/kana) supplied at first point out the place useful for identification in Japanese-language sources and catalogues.

By the late Nineteen Twenties, the time period shinkō (新興) (“new” or “progressive”) circulated broadly in Japanese cultural discourse, alongside quickly increasing city modernity and new mass publics for magazines and visible tradition.^[8] Within images, this broader local weather supported the emergence of shinkō shashin (新興写真) (“New Photography”) as a modernist break with earlier pictorialist conventions and as a set of practices debated throughout periodicals and native circles relatively than by way of a single centralized establishment.^[8]

Japanese picture historiography typically identifies the 1931 German International Touring Photography Exhibition (linked to Film und Foto) as a catalytic encounter that sharpened the sense of a “before/after” between “old” and “new” images in Japan.^[9] In the early Nineteen Thirties, Tokyo-based small-press initiatives such because the journal Kōga (光画) (1932) helped articulate an anti-pictorialist stance in print and promoted modernist approach as a program of “return” to images’s particular properties.^[9] These debates contributed to a broad “New Photography” milieu that would journey throughout cities by way of publications and exhibitions even when specific circles and magazines have been institutionally fragile or short-lived.^[9]

By the mid-Nineteen Thirties, modernist images in Japan diversified throughout a number of native circuits and functions, together with club-based experimentation and extra utilized instructions that circulated by way of the identical print and exhibition infrastructures.^[10] The 1990 Nagoya City Art Museum catalogue frames Kansai beginner digicam golf equipment—reminiscent of Naniwa Photography Club (浪華写真倶楽部), Ashiya Camera Club (芦屋カメラクラブ), and Tanpei Photography Club (丹平写真倶楽部)—as an necessary base the place “New Photography” developed towards extra explicitly “avant-garde” orientations within the early Nineteen Thirties.^[10]

The similar catalogue treats the 1937 touring exhibition Kaigai Chōgenjitsushugi Sakuhinten (海外超現実主義作品展) (“Exhibition of Overseas Surrealist Works”), proven in cities together with Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and Nagoya, as a key turning level that divides the trajectory of Japan’s prewar avant-garde images into an earlier and later section.^[10] In the late Nineteen Thirties, zen’ei shashin (前衛写真) (“avant-garde photography”) grew to become extra seen as a self-description throughout a number of research-oriented teams, together with formations such because the Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde (ナゴヤ・フォトアヴァンギャルド) in Nagoya and different contemporaneous circles elsewhere in Japan.^[10] In Nagoya, {the catalogue} hyperlinks the formation of the Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde (1939) to earlier interdisciplinary contexts and notes its membership and exercise as a study- and critique-oriented group that additionally circulated work through magazines reminiscent of Photo Times (フォトタイムス).^[11] The catalogue additionally identifies poet-photographer Kansuke Yamamoto among the many members within the Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde’s circle throughout this era.^[11]

Under intensifying wartime cultural controls, the 1990 catalogue states that the time period “zen’ei (前衛)” (“avant-garde”) was prohibited and that teams rebranded, with the Zen’ei Shashin Kyōkai (前衛写真協会) renamed Shashin Zōkei Kenkyūkai (写真造形研究会) and the Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde (ナゴヤ・フォトアヴァンギャルド) renamed Nagoya Shashin Bunka Kenkyūkai (名古屋写真文化研究会).^[12] In this framing, the late-Nineteen Thirties avant-garde surge is characterised as short-lived, with the broader motion declining as wartime situations privileged “reportage photography” and documentary legibility over experimental positioning.^[12] Recent English-language scholarship equally notes that, throughout the publication technique of the Surrealist images album Mesemu zoku (メセム属) (1940), the contextual time period “avant-garde” was displaced by “plasticity” (zōkei (造形)) in response to political pressures.^[13] For Nagoya particularly, the 1990 catalogue experiences that the Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde adopted the title “Nagoya Photography Culture Association” (Nagoya Shashin Bunka Kyōkai (名古屋写真文化協会)) round late 1939.^[11]

In broader accounts of Japanese Surrealism and its visible arts, the Nineteen Thirties are sometimes mentioned as forming an necessary hyperlink between prewar and postwar avant-gardes, even when overt “avant-garde” identification had been made troublesome beneath wartime situations.^[14] Stojkovic argues that Surrealist concepts remained central to postwar avant-garde artwork in Japan past the Nineteen Thirties, extending past but additionally together with images.^[15] Within this longer arc, Yamamoto is described as resuming actions after the battle and persevering with to take part in later photographic circles.^[16]

Interwar and wartime photographic experimentation in Japan circulated primarily by way of magazines, which mixed portfolios, technical steerage, and significant debate for a nationwide readership.^[17] Stojković notes that magazines reminiscent of Photo Times (フォトタイムス) performed a central function in disseminating modernist approaches, together with by way of recurring editorial options that foregrounded new apply and approach.^[18] In 1938, Photo Times devoted house to debate on “avant-garde photography” in a devoted roundtable dialogue, whereas critics reminiscent of Shūzō Takiguchi contributed essays on the subject in the identical journal.^[19][20] Museum-catalogue accounts of the Nagoya milieu notice that members of the Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde (ナゴヤ・フォトアヴァンギャルド) appeared in Photo Times quickly after the group’s formation and have been repeatedly launched there in 1939–1940, illustrating how “regional” work could possibly be positioned inside a nationwide photographic discourse.^[21]

Exhibition catalogues on Japanese Surrealism additionally emphasize that concepts related to avant-garde images circulated by way of modernist poetry publishing and translation exercise, creating channels that ran alongside images magazines.^[22] For Nagoya, the 1990 catalogue identifies the poetry journal Ciné (シネ) (1929–1930) as the town’s first Surrealist journal and treats later small-press exercise as a part of the native context by which Surrealist images developed.^[22] The similar catalogue describes the Surrealist poetry journal Yoru no Funsui (夜の噴水) as based in 1938 and edited by Kansuke Yamamoto and Chirū Yamanaka, offering a degree of contact between poetic Surrealism and photographic apply.^[22]

Touring exhibitions supplied alternatives to come across Surrealist imagery and objects past reproduced illustrations, and so they created shared reference factors that could possibly be mentioned throughout cities in print.^[23] The 1990 catalogue describes the touring Exhibition of Overseas Surrealist Works (Kaigai Chōgenjitsushugi Sakuhinten (海外超現実主義作品展), 1937) as together with in depth photographic reproductions of Surrealist portray and sculpture, underscoring the function of mediated pictures in how Surrealism was studied and debated in Japan.^[23]

Outside formal artwork academies, common conferences, critiques, and research periods in golf equipment and casual teams supplied a sensible infrastructure for making and evaluating experimental pictures.^[17] Writing on Nagoya’s photographic historical past, Jō Takeba characterizes native fashionable images actions—from early “art photography” by way of the prewar “photo avant-garde”—as arising from cycles of beginner group formation and dissolution, supported by a dense native base of studios and suppliers.^[24] Nagoya-specific catalogues additional describe how poet–critics and photographers shared worldwide reference factors by way of dialogue and editorial work; for instance, a 1989 Nagoya City Art Museum catalogue notes Yamanaka’s function in introducing Surrealist periodicals reminiscent of Minotaure and Cahiers d’Art to the group’s discussions and publications.^[25]

Accounts of interwar Japanese “New Photography” emphasize darkroom- and magazine-mediated experimentation, together with methods reminiscent of photomontage and photograms (camera-less pictures made by inserting objects instantly on photosensitive paper).^[26] Stojkovic notes that these procedures have been promoted to an increasing beginner readership by way of journal columns and study-group exercise, encouraging photographers to deal with approach as a web site of modernist inquiry relatively than merely a method of copy.^[27] Within regional avant-garde circles, staged nonetheless lifes and montage-based constructions supplied methods to shift images away from easy depiction towards constructed pictures and conceptual juxtaposition.^[28]

Museum writing on the Nagoya milieu describes prewar “avant-garde photography” as taking types related to each Surrealism and abstraction, whereas additionally stressing that practitioners typically pursued distinct goals relatively than strict adherence to Surrealist orthodoxy.^[28] In Stojkovic’s account, wartime pressures made “avant-garde” language troublesome to maintain publicly; within the publication technique of the Surrealist images album Mesemu zoku (メセム属) (1940), “avant-garde” was displaced by “plasticity” (zōkei (造形)), a shift that listed a re-framing of experimental images beneath political constraint.^[29] The later album Zōkei shashin (造型写真) (1941) has been mentioned as articulating a constructive “plasticity” orientation inside avant-garde images, emphasizing type, construction, and abstraction as a photographic drawback relatively than Surrealist narrative or symbolism.^[30]

A recurring subject in accounts of Japanese avant-garde images is how photographers negotiated the medium’s claims to mechanical “objectivity” whereas utilizing procedures (montage, staging, constructed motifs) that foregrounded intervention and authorship.^[27][28] The 1989 Nagoya City Art Museum catalogue, for instance, describes photographers who sought to exceed images’s inherent objectivity by developing motifs by way of montage and, in some instances, by fabricating the motif itself earlier than photographing it.^[28] The similar catalogue frames the interval as one by which practitioners pursued divergent options—starting from direct depiction and disciplined “straight” approaches to poetry-and-photography experimentation (together with the poet-photographer Kansuke Yamamoto)—and it notes that some figures redirected their considerations towards different photographic genres as wartime situations intensified.^[28]

This part summarizes three regional circuits—Nagoya, Kansai, and Tokyo—that recur in scholarship on Japan’s interwar and early wartime avant-garde images as websites the place apply and debate have been organized by way of totally different institutional mixes (publishing, golf equipment, and exhibitions).^[31]

Exhibition catalogues on Japanese Surrealism describe Nagoya as a web site the place modernist poetry publishing and translation exercise supplied an necessary conduit for Surrealist concepts alongside photographic apply.^[32] The 1990 catalogue identifies the poetry journal Ciné (シネ) (1929–1930) as Nagoya’s first Surrealist journal and describes Yoru no Funsui (夜の噴水) as based in 1938 and edited by Kansuke Yamamoto and Chirū Yamanaka.^[32]

The similar catalogue experiences that the Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde (ナゴヤ・フォトアヴァンギャルド) fashioned in 1939 and that its members—together with Yamamoto—circulated work and group exercise by way of nationwide images magazines reminiscent of Photo Times (フォトタイムス).^[33] For late-Nineteen Thirties Nagoya, Stojkovic discusses how wartime pressures affected public framing: throughout the publication technique of the Surrealist images album Mesemu zoku (メセム属) (1940), “avant-garde” language was displaced by “plasticity” (zōkei (造形)) as a contextual time period.^[34] She additionally discusses the album Zōkei shashin (造型写真) (1941) as articulating a constructive “plasticity” orientation inside this milieu, emphasizing type and abstraction as a photographic drawback.^[35]

Stojkovic describes Kansai camera-club tradition as an necessary base for sustained experimentation within the early Nineteen Thirties, together with photographers who participated in exhibitions and contributed to modernist picture magazines.^[36] In later discussions of “avant-garde photography” as a class, Kansai-linked networks seem as a part of cross-city debate relatively than as an remoted regional scene.^[37]

Tokyo-based magazines and critics performed an outsized function in defining vocabulary and mediating disputes about what “avant-garde photography” might imply beneath political strain.^[37] For instance, Photo Times (フォトタイムス) hosted a roundtable dialogue on “avant-garde photography” in 1938, and critics reminiscent of Shūzō Takiguchi revealed essays addressing the subject in the identical journal.^[38][39] Stojkovic situates this magazine-centered discourse inside a broader interwar photographic print tradition by which methods and ideas circulated nationally by way of periodicals and associated networks.^[31]

This part lists chosen figures continuously mentioned in sources on interwar and early wartime Japanese avant-garde images as organizers, critics, or members in regional circuits; it isn’t a complete roster of photographers energetic within the interval.^[40]

• Kansuke Yamamoto is mentioned as a poet-photographer within the Nagoya milieu who edited the Surrealist poetry journal Yoru no Funsui (夜の噴水) (based 1938) and took part in late-Nineteen Thirties avant-garde images networks within the metropolis.^[41][42]
• Chirū Yamanaka is described within the Nagoya City Art Museum catalogue as a theoretical information throughout the Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde circle who launched worldwide Surrealist supplies (together with periodicals reminiscent of Minotaure and Cahiers d’Art) and sought direct trade overseas, together with arranging publication of Tsugio Tajima’s work in Minotaure.^[43]
• Shūzō Takiguchi seems in museum accounts as a significant critic of Surrealism who co-planned the 1937 touring exhibition Kaigai Chōgenjitsushugi Sakuhinten (海外超現実主義作品展) with Yamanaka, a key encounter level for avant-garde circles throughout a number of cities.^[44]
• Yoshio Shimozato is famous in the identical catalogue as an organizer and supporter of the 1937 Surrealist touring exhibition (as editor-in-chief of Shunchōkai (春鳥会)) and is handled in Nagoya-focused writing as a central participant in native Surrealist and avant-garde exercise.^[44][45]
• Minoru Sakata is contrasted within the 1989 Nagoya City Art Museum catalogue with different Nagoya photographers as a determine who labored by way of Surrealist and summary types whereas remaining skeptical about “photo-surrealism” and later redirecting his pursuits towards vernacular/folks images as a mannequin for the medium.^[46]
• Tsugio Tajima is described in the identical catalogue as pursuing a disciplined “straight” strategy—photographing topics instantly and growing a restrained irony—throughout the broader discipline of Nagoya avant-garde apply.^[46]
• Keiichirō Gotō is mentioned within the 1989 catalogue as working contemporaneously with (however not formally inside) the Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde, developing pictures by way of photomontage and later manipulating motifs extra instantly as a method of difficult images’s inherent objectivity; {the catalogue} additionally notes his early reference to Yamamoto in late-Nineteen Thirties Nagoya.^[43]Critics and editors related to the interwar “New Photography” infrastructure—together with figures reminiscent of images critic Nobuo Ina and journal editors linked to Photo Times (フォトタイムス)—are handled in English-language scholarship as key mediators who circulated terminology and approach to an increasing beginner public, offering situations for later “avant-garde” debates.^[40]

Accounts of Japan’s interwar and early wartime avant-garde images have typically emphasised the instability of terminology and the issue of sustaining overt “avant-garde” positioning beneath growing political scrutiny, whereas additionally reconstructing the interval by way of regional networks and small-scale publishing relatively than a single institutional heart.^[47][48]

Stojkovic notes that late-Nineteen Thirties discourse round zen’ei shashin (“avant-garde photography”) included efforts to redefine the time period in ways in which decreased its earlier political cost, reflecting its sensitivity beneath surveillance situations.^[47] In her account of the 1940 Surrealist images album Mesemu zoku (メセム属), Stojkovic argues that the contextual time period “avant-garde” was displaced by “plasticity” (zōkei (造形)) throughout publication as a response to political pressures on cultural expression.^[49] An essay within the 1990 Nagoya City Art Museum catalogue equally frames wartime cultural and ideological controls as driving a shift away from “avant-garde” language towards labels reminiscent of “photography culture” and “plasticity”, and it treats this terminological change as proof of a constrained public house for experimental work.^[48]

Nagoya City Art Museum catalogues have performed an necessary function in consolidating a regional-network mannequin for prewar avant-garde images, presenting the Nagoya milieu by way of the interplay of poetry-led Surrealist publishing and images teams such because the Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde (ナゴヤ・フォトアヴァンギャルド).^[50][51] Within this museum framing, practitioners are described as adopting types related to Surrealism and abstraction whereas pursuing divergent goals inside images (together with “straight” approaches, poetry-and-photography experimentation, and montage-based constructions).^[50] Later native criticism and historiographic interventions have revisited Nagoya’s photographic historical past as a long-running motion ecology, emphasizing the function of beginner teams and native infrastructures in producing each “art photography” and prewar avant-garde exercise.^[52] In English-language scholarship, Stojkovic treats Surrealist images as rising by way of the infrastructures of shinkō shashin (新興写真) and later being reshaped by the constraints of the late Nineteen Thirties and early Forties, providing a synthesis that connects Tokyo- and Kansai-based print tradition with Nagoya’s interdisciplinary networks (together with figures reminiscent of Kansuke Yamamoto).^[53][49]

Scholarship on Japan’s interwar and early wartime avant-garde images generally emphasizes its procedural repertoire—particularly using montage-based development (together with photomontage and photocollage), camera-less experimentation reminiscent of photograms, and staged object work—as a key a part of what later accounts establish as modernist and Surrealist photographic apply in Japan.^[54][55] Within Nagoya-focused accounts, the wartime shift from “avant-garde” language towards “plasticity” (zōkei (造形)) is handled not solely as a constraint on public description but additionally as a framing that formed how abstraction and constructive type have been mentioned in photographic phrases.^[56][57]

A second legacy is conceptual relatively than stylistic: sources repeatedly body the interval as grappling with images’s claims to mechanical “objectivity” and with the query of how experimental work could possibly be justified socially beneath escalating wartime controls.^[55][56] In Nagoya City Art Museum writing, photographers within the Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde (ナゴヤ・フォトアヴァンギャルド) milieu are described as pursuing divergent options—starting from direct depiction and disciplined “straight” approaches to montage-led development and poetry-and-photography experimentation (together with the poet-photographer Kansuke Yamamoto)—relatively than converging on a single Surrealist orthodoxy.^[55]

Institutionally, later histories typically deal with prewar photographic tradition as a motion ecology sustained by magazines and amateur-group infrastructures, with regional circuits (together with Nagoya) functioning as manufacturing and circulation nodes for modernist and avant-garde apply.^[58][59] Stojkovic additional argues that Surrealist concepts remained central to postwar avant-garde artwork in Japan past the Nineteen Thirties, offering one pathway by way of which prewar photographic experimentation continued to matter in later accounts of Japanese modernism.^[60]

Shinkō shashin (新興写真)

A Japanese time period often translated as “New Photography”, used for interwar modernist images linked to city modernity, journal tradition, and experiments in framing and approach; Stojkovic treats it as a key infrastructure inside which later Surrealist/avant-garde images emerged.^[69]

Zen’ei shashin (前衛写真)

“Avant-garde photography”; Stojkovic describes late-Nineteen Thirties debate across the time period as delicate beneath surveillance and as involving makes an attempt to redefine its political cost.^[70]

Shashin zōkei (写真造形)

A “plasticity”/constructive-form framing utilized in wartime contexts; Stojkovic discusses “plasticity” (造形) instead contextual label for experimental images beneath political strain.^[66][68]

Shashin bunka (写真文化)

“Photography culture”; the 1990 Nagoya City Art Museum catalogue treats “photography culture” language as a part of wartime-era re-framing that displaced overt “avant-garde” terminology.^[67]

• Nagoya publishing circuit: Ciné (シネ) and Yoru no Funsui (夜の噴水) (edited by Yamamoto), handled as conduits for Surrealist translation and discourse in Nagoya.^[61]
• Nagoya group circuit: Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde (ナゴヤ・フォトアヴァンギャルド) (fashioned 1939), reported as circulating exercise by way of nationwide images magazines reminiscent of Photo Times (フォトタイムス).^[65]
• Cross-city exhibition circuit: the 1937 touring Kaigai Chōgenjitsushugi Sakuhinten (海外超現実主義作品展), handled as a shared reference level for Surrealist-related visible tradition throughout cities.^[64]
• Interwar journal infrastructure: the post-1931 “New Photography” ecosystem described by Stojkovic, with magazines and beginner readerships supporting approach switch and debate past a single heart.^[69]

• Stojković, Jelena (2020). Surrealism and Photography in Nineteen Thirties Japan: The Impossible Avant-Garde. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-1788314053.
• 名古屋市美術館 (1989). 名古屋のフォト・アヴァンギャルド : 名古屋市美術館常設企画展 [Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde: Nagoya City Art Museum permanent exhibition] (in Japanese). Nagoya: 名古屋市美術館.
• 名古屋市美術館 (1990). 日本のシュールレアリスム : 1925～1945 [Surrealism in Japan: 1925–1945] (in Japanese). Nagoya: 日本のシュールレアリスム展実行委員会.
• Takeba, Jō (2021). 「写真の都」物語 : 名古屋写真運動史 1911-1972 [“Photo Capital” Story: The Movement of Modern Photography in Nagoya, 1911–1972] (in Japanese). Tokyo: 国書刊行会. ISBN 978-4336071989.
• Takeba, Jō (20 July 2006). 或るチャートへの注釈｜名古屋の写真史を巡る断章 [Notes on a Chart: Fragments on the History of Photography in Nagoya]. REAR (in Japanese) (14).
• Keller, Judith; Maddox, Amanda, eds. (2013). Japan’s Modern Divide: The Photographs of Hiroshi Hamaya and Kansuke Yamamoto. Los Angeles: Getty Publications. ISBN 978-1606061329.