Photography for everyone : the cultural lives of cameras and consumers in early twentieth-century

231 Pages·2015·7 MB·English

by  Ross, Kerry

Stanford University Press Stanford, California
© 2015 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system
without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ross, Kerry, author.
Photography for everyone : the cultural lives of cameras and consumers in early twentieth-century Japan /
Kerry Ross.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8047-9423-7 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8047-9564-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1.
Photography—Social aspects—Japan—History—20th century. 2. Japan—Social life and customs—1912–
1945. I. Title.
TR105.R67 2015
770.952—dc23
2015007262
ISBN 978-0-8047-9563-0 (electronic) Typeset by Bruce Lundquist in 10/14.5 Sabon
Kerry Ross
PHOTOGRAPHY FOR EVERYONE
The Cultural Lives of Cameras and Consumers in Early
Twentieth-Century Japan
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
For Carol,
who, though she didn’t make it to see this book in print,
was my most enthusiastic cheerleader from the beginning
And for Asher,
who everyday inspires me to be inquisitive
and reminds me to play
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Preface
Introduction
1. A Retail Revolution: Male Shoppers and the Creation of the Modern Shop
2. Photography for Everyone: Women, Hobbyists, and Marketing Photography
3. Instructions for Life: How-to Literature and Hobby Photography
4. Democratizing Leisure: Camera Clubs and the Popularization of Photography
5. Making Middlebrow Photography: The Aesthetics and Craft of Amateur
Photography
Epilogue
Appendix: Masaoka Photography Club Bylaws
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ILLUSTRATIONS
FIGURE 1.1. Meiji period Sakura trademarks
FIGURE 1.2. Advertisement for Sakura products
FIGURE 1.3. Konishi Roku’s shop in the 1880s
FIGURE 1.4. Konishi Roku’s shop and headquarters, Nihonbashi, 1916
FIGURE 1.5. Konishi Roku’s shop window display, 1924
FIGURE 1.6. Konishi Roku’s glass display cases, 1916
FIGURE 1.7. Konishi Roku’s barrack-style temporary shop, late 1923
FIGURE 1.8. Konishi Roku’s new headquarters and shop, 1932
FIGURE 1.9. Konishi Roku’s shop employees wearing Western suits, 1928
FIGURE 1.10. San’eidō used-camera shop show window, 1936
FIGURE 1.11. Ad for Kōeidō used-camera shop, 1937
FIGURE 2.1. Outdoor Photography Competition, 11 November 1925
FIGURE 2.2. Advertisement for the Pearlette camera, 1925
FIGURE 2.3. Advertisement for the Sakura Kamera, 1937
FIGURE 2.4. Advertisement for the Minolta Vest and Baby Minolta cameras,
1937
FIGURE 2.5. Typical female photographer, 1930
FIGURE 2.6. Cover of Hyakuman nin no shashin jutsu
FIGURE 2.7. Advertisement for Haufu Reonaru photographic goods shop, 1930
FIGURE 2.8. Advertisement for the Sun Stereo camera, 1937
FIGURE 2.9. Advertisement for the Rolleicord and Rolleiflex cameras, 1938
FIGURE 2.10. “Grandfather and Grandchild Meeting after a Long Time”
FIGURE 2.11. “Bad Baby”
FIGURE 2.12. How to use the viewfinder
TABLE 3.1. Selected list of how-to book titles, 1926–1933
FIGURE 3.1. “Victim of the Homemade Camera”
FIGURE 3.2. “Photographic Technique, Then and Now”
FIGURE 3.3. “What to Call Each Part of the Camera”
FIGURE 3.4. Illustration of a simple darkroom
FIGURE 3.5. “Tools You Must Have to Develop Film”
FIGURE 3.6. Diagram of a well-organized darkroom
FIGURE 3.7. “The Priest Learns a Lesson from the Camera”
FIGURE 3.8. “Advantages of Enlarging”
FIGURE 3.9. Using a dodging device during the enlarging process
FIGURE 3.10. “Viewfinder, Magnifier”
FIGURE 3.11. Advertisement for Sakura photographic products
FIGURE 3.12. “How to Use a Vest Pocket Kodak”
FIGURE 3.13. “Preparing a Flash Bulb”
FIGURE 3.14. “Three Steps in Developing, Using a Tray”
FIGURE 4.1. Advertisement for Konishi Roku’s Minimum Idea camera, 1913
FIGURE 4.2. Prepackaged membership card for the Pearlette Photography
League
FIGURE 4.3. Pearlette camera and box
FIGURE 4.4. Case options for the Pearlette camera
FIGURE 4.5. “Exhibition to Popularize Knowledge of Japanese Photography,”
1934
FIGURE 4.6. “Exhibition to Popularize Knowledge of Japanese Photography,”
1934
FIGURE 4.7. “Exhibition to Popularize Knowledge of Japanese Photography,”
1934
FIGURE 5.1. Readers’ winning submissions for Asahi kamera Monthly Photo
Competition, Division One, April 1928
FIGURE 5.2. Readers’ winning submissions for Asahi kamera Monthly Photo
Competition, Divisions Two and Three, September 1938
FIGURE 5.3. Winners of Kamera kurabu’s Sixth Monthly Photo Competition
and of “Selected by Suzuki Hachirō,” July 1936
FIGURE 5.4. Advertisement for Arusu fine grain developer, ca. 1938
FIGURE 5.5. Announcement for Yamaguchi Shōkai Photo Enlargement
Contest, November 1925
FIGURE 5.6. Announcement for the Third Domestic Products Competition in
Photography, November 1935
FIGURE 5.7. Announcement for Misuzu Shōkai Photo Contest, November 1925
FIGURE 5.8. Celebrity judges listed prominently in announcement for Asahi
kamera’s Photos of Urban Beauty Contest, September 1936
FIGURE 5.9. Celebrity judges support the national policy of bolstering domestic
production, September 1938
FIGURE 5.10. Announcement for the Mitsukoshi Vest Camera Club First
Competition in Photography, December 1921
FIGURE 5.11. “Exhibition of Winning Vest Photographs,” February 1922
FIGURE 5.12. “Prize-Winning Vest Photographs” February 1922
FIGURE 5.13. Announcement of contest for commercial photography
advertising cigarettes, April 1936
FIGURE 5.14. “Untitled,” Fuchigami Hakuyō, Bromoil, 1930s
FIGURE 5.15. “A Train Rushing,” Fuchigami Hakuyō, Bromoil, 1930
FIGURE 5.16. “The Conductor’s Speech,” Kimura Kiyoshi, December 1936
FIGURE 5.17. “Artistic Conscience,” Sugiura Yukio, 1936
FIGURE 5.18. “Tower,” Asano Yōichi, 1940
FIGURE 5.19. “Double Exposure,” Hirai Fusando, 1933
FIGURE 5.20. “What Is Montage?,” Hirai Fusando, 1933
PREFACE
The idea for this book began when I started research on the history of modernist
photography in Japan. Once in the archives, contrary to my expectations based
on all earnest, and I thought, thorough, preparations, I found that most materials
concerning photography during the early twentieth century were directed toward
amateur photographers. Instructional writing, amateur photographs, and
advertisements fill page after page of how-to books and photography magazines
from the time. Indeed, postwar scholars have made modernist photography stand
in for nearly all photographic activity of that time. To date, most scholarly work
on the subject has focused on the origins and development of a single strand of
art photography, with particular attention to the creative efforts of a select few
individual artists and theorists. Rarely have historians paid attention to the role
of the typical middle-class consumer in photographic practices, yet it was these
ordinary photographers to whom the majority of products, publications, and
ideals of photography were marketed. This inattention to the wider photographic
archive has created a skewed historical understanding of the social and cultural
meaning of photography. What I show in the following pages is that
photographic practice can be more accurately understood as the product of a
complex relationship between middle-class consumer behavior, profit-driven
camera companies, and movements to popularize photographic art. The aim of
this study is to resituate the historical discussion of photography in Japan, one
that has been dominated by concerns with aesthetic representation, in order to
reveal the everyday meaning of photography for ordinary Japanese people in the
early twentieth century.
At Columbia University, Henry Smith, Carol Cluck, and Andreas Huyssen
were instrumental to my thinking about the project and, in particular, about how
to use images as sources for historical analysis. Kim Brandt and Eugenia Lean
entered the fold a bit later but have continued to support the project with much-
appreciated enthusiasm. My cohort at Columbia, especially Leila Wice, Sarah
Kovner, Lori Watt, Ken Oshima, and Jonathon Zwicker, always challenged me
to push my ideas further.
Later, a Fulbright IIE Dissertation Research Fellowship provided the
opportunity to conduct the bulk of the research for this project in Tokyo from
1999 to 2001. Columbia generously funded the writing of this project by the
Junior Japan Fellowship, the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures,
and the Committee on Asia and the Middle East. At DePaul, the University
Research Council Paid Leave program generously supported me as I finished
some crucial revisions to the book in 2011–2012. The University Research
Council also helped fund publication of the images found in this book. DePaul’s
College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences supported me in 2012 with a
Summer Research Grant. The Japan Foundation Short-Term Research Grant
made it possible for me to return to Japan (and to live in Nihonbashi!) for two
months to complete the research.
So many young scholars starting out in the archives in Japan, myself included,
have been patiently and unstintingly supported by Yoshimi Shun’ya of the
Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Tokyo.
Likewise, Satō Kenji in the Department of Sociology at the University of Tokyo
cheerfully advised me at an early stage in the project. Kaneko Ryūichi kindly
made time for me and thoughtfully answered every question that I had about the
history of Japanese photography. Okatsuka Akiko and the staff at the Research
Library of the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography gave me open
access to their wonderful archives. The staff at JCII Library connected to the
Japan Camera and Optical Instruments Inspection and Testing Institute helped
me locate some very rare copies of key sources.
Many people have taken time to read parts of the manuscript, and their
criticism along the way has helped make this a better book. I am particularly
grateful to Paize Keulemans, Greg Pflugfelder, and Chuck Woolridge for their
thoughtful comments at an early stage. Paul Barclay, Julia Thomas, and Gennifer
Weisenfeld, all of whose work has been inspirational to me, generously
answered many of my questions along the way.
The History Department at DePaul University has been a wonderful place for
me to grow as a teacher and historian. I am particularly indebted to Tom Foster,
whose wise, unadulterated advice on all matters intellectual and professional
helps me stay sane. Gene Beiriger, Brian Boeck, Lisa Sigel, and Amy Tyson
have been nothing but supportive and have helped me at various stages in the
final preparation of the book. I am also grateful for the intellectual and social
camaraderie of Scott Bucking, Tom Krainz, Rajit Mazumder, Brent Nunn,
Otunnu, Ana Schaposchnik, Margaret Storey, Roshanna Sylvester, Valentina
Tikoff, Julia Woesthoff, and everyone else in the History Department. Ian
Petchenik assisted me with the images found in this book and entertained me
with his wry sense of humor. Nobuko Chikamatsu in the Department of Modern
Languages, Yuki Miyamoto in the Department of Religious Studies, and
Elizabeth Lillehoj in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture are
wonderful colleagues in the Japanese Studies Program, my second home at