I was pleased to see mention of Sasamoto Tsuneko. She is a dear friend of mine who will turn 96 on Sept. 1. She is still shooting photographs and lecturing. For the record she began taking photographs in the early 40s. My husband, photographer Yasuo Konishi, and I have organized a show of her Showa work. It’s on from Sept. 28 – Oct. 5 at Gallery Cosmos in Meguro.

Best,

Kate

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Samoamax info

My site http://www.samoamax.info

I gave the example of literature because all the necessary bits of that riposte happened already to be ready in my head. I’ve a hunch that other non-postcardy aspects (e.g. architecture) have been known as well, but I’m a lazy fellow and don’t want to chase this up.

You’re right: a history of mid-twentieth-century photography in Germany and more particularly the US would be unimaginable without discussing its women. Certainly Japan has been profoundly sexist, and whether for that or for other reasons women photographers in the Pre-Hiromix Era were hugely less conspicuous than men. Still, a lot existed and did good work, but go unmentioned. Worse, a number are still very much alive and active and able to google for their names and understand the (non-) results in Japanese or English, and I sometimes wonder what they think as they see themselves written out of history.

I’m particularly surprised by your non-discovery of a single woman in photographic archives in 1998/99 as this would have been when “Nihon shashinka jiten” (published 2000) would have been compiled. That book is a dictionary of those photographers who (with a very few, clearly marked exceptions) were at that time represented in the permanent collection of the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography (“Syabi”). The current building had opened in 1995 with two or three exhibitions, one of which (“Tokyo/City of Photographs”) included Ushioda Tokuko among its eleven photographers.

The historically minded “Syabi” publication predating your tour of Japan that came quickest to hand was the strangely titled three-volume “Japanese Photography Form In/Out”. It seems only to have Tokiwa Toyoko and Kon Michiko: very disappointing. Similarly, the Konica Plaza’s two-volume “Shashinka wa nani o mita ka” seems only to have Tokiwa and Ishiuchi. From the seventies, the Camera Mainichi 20th anniversary “Shashinka 100-nin kao to sakuhin” only has Kiyomiya Yumiko and Imai Hisae (and thus is 98% male, unless I sleepily omitted to notice somebody). Yes, yes, all very depressing (and way under 10%). Still, Nikon’s two-volume “History of Modern Photos” (2001) has Ishiuchi, Kon, Ushioda, Yoshida Ruiko, Ooishi Yoshino, Kodama Fusako, Orihara Kei, Matsumoto Michiko, as well as a pile of women born later (and also some earlier ones with sex-ambiguous names).

Asahi Camera, Nippon Camera and Camera Mainichi may have been sexist, but they certainly published features by Japanese women photographers. (By women living abroad, too: Camera Mainichi was an early publisher of the work of under-celebrated Markéta Luskačová.)

Perhaps these (now) older women would be more celebrated now if they’d put out more girlish and prettier work. I’m in a minority: given the choice between two exhibitions of “Japanese Women Photographers”, “1. Before Hiromix” and “2. Hiromix and after”, I wouldn’t hesitate to plump for part 1.