Surrealism and Photography in 1930s Japan: The Impossible Avant-Garde [1 ed.] 9781788314053, 1788314050

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Note on the Use of Japanese Language
Introduction
PART ONE 'NEW' PHOTOGRAPHY
1 Emergence
Artistic intentions
Beyond reality
Abandoning control
Professionals and amateurs
2 Photo-collages
Two-way mirrors
Constellation
Fragmentation
Overlaying, staging, re-photographing
PART TWO 'AVANT-GARDE' PHOTOGRAPHY
3 Images without texts
Criticism
Repetition
Representation
Printed matter
4 Coded revolution
Photographs of objects
'Camera's automatism'
'Neo-Surrealism'
Part Three 'PLASTIC' PHOTOGRAPHY
5 Materiality
Abstraction
Paranoia-criticism
Scale arid perspective
Photographic technology
6 Locality
Exchange
Traditional aesthetics
Everyday life
Disconnection
Conclusion
Selected Biographies
Selected Organizations
Notes
Bibliography
Index

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SURREALISM AND

PHOTOGRAPHY IN 1930s JAPAN

SURREALISM AND PHOTOGRAPHY IN 1930s JAPAN The

Impossible Avant-Garde

JELENA STOJKOVIĆ

First published 2020 by Bloomsbury Academic 2 Park

Published 2020 by Routledge Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon

OX14

4RN

605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Jelena Stojković, 2020 Jelena Stojković

has asserted her

right under the Copyright, Designs and

Patents Act, 1988, to be identified For

legal

purposes the

as

Author of this work.

Acknowledgements on p. copyright page.

x

constitute

an

extension of this

Cover design by Graham Robert Ward Cover

Terushichi, image:Hirai c.

Face, 1940.

Courtesy of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum,

© Atsuko Iwasaki

All

rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

or

Notice: Product

or

may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

corporate

names

are

used

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN13: 978-1-7883-1405-3 (hbk)

Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd.

only for

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations vii

Acknowledgements Note

on

x

the Use of Japanese Language xii

1 Introduction

PART ONE 'NEW' PHOTOGRAPHY (shinko shashin) 11 1

Emergence

13

Artistic intentions 16

Beyond reality

21

Abandoning control

25

Professionals and amateurs 29

2

Photo-collages Two-way mirrors

37

38

Constellation 46

Fragmentation

50

Overlaying, staging, re-photographing

54

PART TWO 'AVANT-GARDE' PHOTOGRAPHY

(zen'ei shashin) 3

63

Images without texts Criticism 67

Repetition

71

Representation

80

Printed matter 89

65

4

Coded revolution Photographs of objects

92 96

'Camera's automatism' 100 'Neo-Surrealism' 107

Part Three 'PLASTIC'PHOTOGRAPHY (zdkei shashin) 115 5

Materiality

117

Abstraction 120 Paranoia-criticism 123 Scale arid perspective 125

Photographic technology 6

Locality

140

Exchange

141

Traditional aesthetics 151

Everyday life

155

Disconnection 160

Conclusion

167

Selected Biographies 178 Selected Organizations 184 Notes 188

Bibliography Index 250

228

134

ILLUSTRATIONS

Chapter

1

1.1

Nakayama Iwata, Untitled, May 1932

1.2

Koishi Kiyoshi, Is There Something Funny?, January 1934 22

1.3 1.3

'For Ei-Kyū, Ei-Kyu, 'For

1.4

Ei-Kyū, Ei-Kyu, from The Reason for Sleep, 1936

1.5

Matsubara JOzo, Jūzō, Untitled, 1934-1935 31

1.6

Matusbara Jūzō, Juzo, Untitled, 1936 32

1.7

Matsubara Jūzō, Liberated hantasy, Juzo, LsDerated Fantasy, 1936-1937 33

Chapter 2.1

a

18

Free Production of Photograms', August 1930 27 29

2

Imai Shigeru, A Cheerful Traveller (1936), October 1938 40

2.2

Yamanaka Chirū, Chiru, IIIIy y

2.3

Yamanaka Chirū, Chiru, Collage, June 1937 44

2.4

Yamamoto Kansuke, Collage, 1938 50

2.5

Ei-Kyū, Ei-Kyu, Real, 1937

2.6

I lanawa Girtgo, Hanawa Gingo, Complex Imagination, Imagination.. 1938 54

2.7

Isshu, Nerval, Dream and Life, July 1938 Nagata Isshū,

2.8

Isshu, Untitled, 1930-1939 Nagata Isshū,

58

2.9

IsshG, Fire Mountain, 1939 Nagata Isshū,

59

2.10

Abe Yoshifumi, 1940 60 Toshifumi, A Shot of Mount Yake, July 1940

Chapter

a un océan ocean

facile, 1937 41

51

57

3

3.1

Hanawa Gingo, Light and Dark Flower and Yasui Nakaji, Butterfly, September 1938 72

3.2

Hirai Terushichi, Blue Sky, September 1938 75

3.3

Yasui Nakaji, Composition: Gyroscope, 1938 76

3.4

Hirai Terushichi, Fantasy of the Moon, 1938 76 H\ra\Jerusb\cbl,

3.5

Hirai Terushichi, Altar, July 1938 79

3.6

Ueda Bizan, Delighted, 1940 81

3.7 3.7

Hirai Terushichi, Face, 1940 83

3.8

Hanawa Gingo, 'Dream of Spring in Broad Daylight', July 1938 85

3.9

Hanawa Gingo, 'Dream of Spring in Broad Daylight', July 1938 86

3.10

Ikemiya Seijirō, Seijiro, Shadow, October 1938

Chapter

88

4

4.1 4.1

Koishi Kiyoshi, 'Record of 1938 98

4.2

Sakata Minoru, Edible, Animal Mud, February 1939 101

a

Camera Trip to Kamikōchi', Kamikochi', October

4.3

Shimozato Yoshio, Two Dormant Volcanoes, February 1939 103

4.4

Sakata Minoru, Four arid and Shimozato Yoshio, A Balloon Giving Birth June 1939 105

4.5

Shimozato Yoshio, from Mesemu zoku: Chogenjitsushugi shashinshū, shashinshu, 1-10, 1940 108

4.6

Various artists, edited by Shimozato Yoshio, from Mesemu zoku: shashinshu, A-J, 1940 109 Chōgenjitsushugi Chogenjitsushugi shashinshū,

Chapter

5

5.1

Abe Yoshrfumi, Yoshifumi, Worktrm Working at Night, 1938 126

5.2

Abe Yoshifumi, Flow, February 1939 127

5.3

Shimozato Yoshio, The Ninth Continent, April 1939 128

5.4

Imai Shigeru, Still Life, August 1939 129

5.5

Takahashi Wataru, Spirit of the Sea, Sea, June 1938 131

5.6

Takahashi Wataru, '__',', June 1939 133

5.7

Yamanaka Chirū, Chiru, 'Sakata Minoru's Artwork', January 1939 135

5.8

Sakata Vlinoru, 1939 137 Minoru, Parage. Parage, 1939

5.9

Sakata Minoru, Sphere, 1939 138

Chapter

6

6.1

Abe Yoshitumi, Yoshifumi, Two Poses, March 1939 143

6.2

1940 144 Two Landscapes, Abe Yoshifumi, Two Landscapes, February 194.0

6.3

Saburo, Sliding Door, September 1939 Hasegawa Saburō,

6.4

Konomi Gnchirō, Giichiro, Untitled, October 1939 149

6.5

Konomi Giichirō, Giichiro, White Door, January 1940 151

6.6

Yamanaka Chirū, Chiru, 'Occasional Thoughts 1940 152

on

148

Plastic Photography', July

6.7

Sakata Minoru, Zōkei shashin, 1941 158 Zokeishashin,

6.8

Shimozato Yoshio, Garments, Zōkei Zokeishashin, shashin, 1941 159

6.9

Tajima Tsugio, Isugio, Dishcloth Embroidery and Piles of Folded Newspapers, Zdkei shashin, 1941 160 Zōkei

6.10a

Yamamoto Kansuke, Birdcage at a a Buddhist Temple, 1940 162 Yamamoto

6.10b

Yamamoto Kansuke, Untitled, 1940 162

6.11

Yamamoto Kansuke, Landscape, 1940 162

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I first encountered the material discussed in this book during my MA in Art History

at SOAS, University of London, over a visit to the British Museum’s Japanese Galleries organized by Dr John Carpenter, my mentor at the time. I continued to engage with it during my doctoral programme of studies at the University of Westminster, under the supervision of Dr Neil Matheson and Professor David Bate, and during my Japan Foundation Fellowship Programme at the University of Tokyo, supported by Professor Hoshino Moriyuki. After consulting several archives and collections in the UK and Japan, I completed my thesis, ‘Out of Sight: Surrealism and Photography in 1930s Japan’, in 2013. Some of its elements were published as book chapters in Minor Photography: Connecting Deleuze and Guattari to Photography Theory (2012) and Object Fantasies: Experience and Creation (2018). I have since revised and rewritten my research for the adapted and expanded context of the book. I would like to thank the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation for supporting the

completion of this project, the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation and the Arts University Bournemouth for allocating funds towards its production and all the institutions and individuals who helped me to locate high-resolution images and clear them of copyright, especially Fujimura Satomi from the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, Takeba Jō from the Nagoya City Art Museum, Kasai Horiyuki from the Yamanaka Chirū Archive at Keio Hiyoshi Library, Abe Yoshimori, Asazuma Shoichi, Iwasaki Atsuko, Kurosawa Yoshiteru, Sakata Takashi, Shimozato Masao, Tajima Shōzō, Ueda Kyozan, Yamamoto Toshio and Yamanaka Keiichi. I would also like to thank Baillie Card, Lisa Goodrum, Louise Baird-Smith and Alexander Highfield for overseeing the long process of the book’s publication, Professor Elza Adamowicz and Professor Krzysztof Fijalkowski for their kind peer reviews and Miwako Hayashi Bitmead for invaluable improvements to my translations and readings of names and titles of sources and artworks in Japanese. I have been teaching contextual studies for fine art and design together with

history and theory of photography since my PhD, and I would like to thank Beverley Carruthens, Duncan Wooldridge, Dr Wiebke Leister, Caryn Simonson, Janice McLaren and David Hazel for entrusting me with those roles and all my colleagues and students for their insights and enthusiasm. I am grateful

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS for the generosity of my friends: Marko Jobst, Dragana Gavrilović, Sanja

Tripković, Takahashi Yoshiko, Julian Ross, Hirasawa Gō, Ruth Novaczek, Başak Ertür, Alisa Lebov, Anton Katz, Marijana Cvetković, Tatjana Gostiljac, Jelena Sokić, Ivonne Santoyo Orozco, Ross Exo Adams, Lucie Mercier, Jonathan Roux, Pauline Lenoir Guajardo, Bahbak Hashemi-Nezhad, Catarina Cubelo, Olivier Rodriguez, Marie Roux, Margareta Kern, Marcus Kern, Flora Pitrolo, Robert Jack, Ricardo Matos Cabo, Karen Di Franco, Mohammad Namazi, Federica Chiocchetti, Ignacio Acosta, Ayesha Hameed, Regine Ehleiter, Christian Berger, Dan Abbe, Persilia Caton, Joseph Kendra, Karen McQuaid, Jonathan Kemp, Joana Rafael, Andrea Pavoni, Habib Lešević, Manca Bajec, Gregor Bulc, Iskra Andreeva, Emma Bennett, Killian Fox, Noah Angel, Deniz Johns, Martin Zeilinger, Lizzie Homersham, Nikolaus Perneczky, Frances Ross, Tasaka Hiroko, Uesaki Sen, and Matsui Shigeru. I grew up in Belgrade and studied Arabic and Japanese before moving to

London. I would not be where I am without my family: my grandparents Ruža, Živan, Draga and Nikola, my parents Mileva and Dragiša, my sisters Marija and Snežana, as well as Mirko, Anđela, Mimi and Miloš. Danilo, you are my book.

NOTE ON THE USE OF

JAPANESE LANGUAGE For the use of Japanese language in this book, I applied the modified Hepburn

system of romanization, including the macrons. I refer to Japanese names with the last name followed by the first name. All translations are my own, unless indicated otherwise.

INTRODUCTION La Peinture surréaliste, the first exhibition of Surrealist painting, opened at

midnight on 13 November 1925. The crowds flooded the Galerie Pierre to see nineteen paintings by Hans Arp, Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, Paul Klee, André Masson, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Man Ray and Pierre Roy.1 The exhibition catalogue, put together by André Breton and Robert Desnos so as to include one photographic reproduction of each artist’s artwork (except for Roy), accompanied the experience of viewing the show, which was the first in a series of sensationalist events that surrounded the public presentations of Surrealist visual arts in the following years. The art critic Moriguchi Tari and the painter Fukuzawa Ichirō went together to view the show before it closed on 25 November. Moriguchi brought the catalogue back with him to Japan and used the reproductions in an article that he wrote about modernist painting in 1928. In this article, however, he did not identify the artists as Surrealist and made no reference to Surrealism.2 Although the route through which the information about this historic exhibition

reached Japan might have been unconventional, Moriguchi’s text was not the first instance in which reproductions of Surrealist painting were seen in the country, as they were circulated at least through subscriptions to such art magazines as Cahiers d’art. It was Le Surréalisme et la peinture (1928) that made a definitive impact on Japanese painters interested in Surrealism, the very size of the volume (24 cm × 19 cm) and the abundance of illustrations assuring an impressive viewing experience for that time. 3 A translation of Breton’s text into Japanese was published in June 1930 accompanied with fifty out of seventyseven images from the original volume. 4 By then, Japanese painters had already started materializing an interest in Surrealism. For instance, Abe Kongō, Koga Harue and Tōgō Seiji exhibited Surrealist artworks at the sixteenth exhibition of the Second Division Society (Nikakai) in 1929, receiving mixed reviews in the January 1930 issue of Atorie, the first magazine issue dedicated to Surrealist visual art in Japan. 5 It thus appears that Surrealist painting found a fertile ground in Japan soon after it was first exhibited in France. However, it seems to have done so without an explicit and singular grounding in Surrealist criticism or action. Rather, the first Surrealist paintings in Japan were seen in an annual

SURREALISM AND PHOTOGRAPHY IN 1930s JAPAN show of an independent artistic collective, disconnected from Surrealism similar

to Moriguchi’s text. Literary Surrealism preceded the practice of Surrealist painting in Japan by

several years. Nishiwaki Junzaburō formed the first literary Surrealist group in the country, upon his appointment as a lecturer in English literature at the Keio University in 1926, following his studies at Oxford.6 The ‘Keio group’ – largely consisting of his students, the most prominent of which was the poet Takiguchi Shūzō – was not the only channel through which the meanings and significance of literary Surrealism were probed in Japan in the 1920s, as it was already finding its way into the country via different routes, earlier in time. The very word for Surrealism in Japanese, chōgenjitsushugi, was coined by an anarchist poet Muramatsu Masatoshi and appeared for the first time in 1925, simultaneous with a number of translations of Surrealist poetry.7 By the turn of the decade, a number of Surrealist texts were published in literary magazines, including Kitagawa Fuyuhiko’s translation of the Manifeste du surréalisme (1924) that appeared in 1929 in the Shi to shiron magazine. By then, Koga, Nishiwaki and Takiguchi were recognized as harbingers of the movement’s increasing influence in the country.8 However, at the same time, Surrealism also encountered criticism in Japan and was reproached to some extent for its reliance on translations as well as for its alleged elitism.9 Surrealism emerged as a literary movement in 1920s Paris after several years

of collective activities of an early Surrealist group. Famously, Breton articulated it ‘once and for all’ in the Manifeste as ‘psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express – verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner the actual functioning of thought’. 10 In this text, which coincided with the official forming of the Surrealist group in France, he proposes that Surrealism is a means for revolutionizing and liberating the mind, strained by the boundaries of logic and convention, which is to be achieved by a complete suspension of conscious control over its working. As a methodology aimed at opening the mind up to a different form of reality, one that acknowledges the space of dreams and aims at making them functional in the waking state, it was greatly indebted to Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams (1900). However, as Roger Shattuck notes in the introduction to Maurice Nadeau’s influential History of Surrealism (1944), any presumption about Surrealism beyond the general consensus that it refers to ‘literary-artistic activity that cantered in Paris’ quickly falls to pieces.11 Even the relationship to painting in a group initially consisting of poets was heatedly debated in the early days of the movement: given the specifications of automatism the very idea of Surrealist painting was considered unorthodox and this tension was among the chief reasons for the publication of Le Surréalisme et la peinture. If some agreement were to be established about the nature of Surrealism, it

would undeniably concern its group logic.12 Collective activity was its consistent

INTRODUCTION and distinctive feature and was manifesting in different formats, ranging from

games to publications and exhibitions. As Krzysztof Fijalkowski defines it, it has been ‘the sine qua non for the elaboration of a Surrealist thought and culture, in a real sense authenticating, guaranteeing and moulding their very possibility’.13 In terms of Japan, what the brief overview above tells us is that the knowledge of Surrealism was arriving through varied channels and that it was engendering significant responses in literary and artistic circles. However, different practices such as Surrealist literature and painting developed mostly independently from each other and outside of a single, unified group and this fact – that there was no ‘centre’ to anchor Surrealism in Japan – is an essential quality of the movement’s existence in the country. Within Surrealism’s international orbit, forming concurrently and in direct relationship to the establishment of the French group, this feature was not exclusive and the well-known examples include at least Belgium and England. However, the fragmentation of literary Surrealism or the seemingly independent emergence of Surrealist painting needs to be viewed as a symptom rather than a cause of the inability to form a single group in Japan, where the enactment of the Peace Preservation Law (Chian ijihō) in 1925 proclaimed any organized opposition to national policy illegal. 14 The governmental body in charge of executing this legislation was the Special Higher Police (Tokubetsu kōtō keisatsu), originally established in 1911 and sometimes referred to as the ‘thought police’ (shisō keisatsu), which systematically suppressed the Communist Party as well as anarchist or proletarian art groups.15 With a group of devoted supporters in France and the constant international

expansion, Surrealism was gaining a high critical acclaim during the 1920s but was also subject to various reproves and went through significant transformations. Most notably, these involved a number of attempts to establish links with the Communist Party under another prominent course of the Surrealist action: that of political commitment. Frustration caused by the inability to agree on the best-suitable means of political engagement resulted in a split within the French group and the ‘Aragon affair’ of 1929, caused by different positions towards the Communist Party taken up by Louis Aragon and Breton in the following two years. These events formed a background for the publication of Breton’s Second manifeste du surréalisme in 1929, a ‘reminder of principles’ that marked the French group’s taking of a separate, independent route from the party politics.16 A large part of this text is dedicated to discrediting most of the people who comprised Breton’s immediate circle during the 1920s, such as Antonin Artaud, Philippe Soupault and Masson as well as Georges Bataille. Entering the 1930s Surrealism was determined by a course of ‘total revolt’, refreshed by new members such as Salvador Dalí and refocused on the problems of the Surrealist object.17 In Japan, the Marxist left and the associated proletarian art movement were

outlawed by 1934, with surveillance extending to Surrealist practices. Flourishing

in the liberal climate of the 1920s, proletarian art came under increased pressure

at the turn of the decade, as its activities were not only advocating worker strikes and political protests but were also starting to grow into a militant revolutionary front.18 Perceived as a challenge to the imperial power, Communism was systematically purged, together with all related organizations, by means of constant arrests in the 1920s. As this suppression was the primary if not the sole function of the Peace Preservation Law, the arrests became even more regular in the 1930s.19 In such a climate, Surrealism was understood as a ‘cultural mission’ of Communism ever since the publication of the Second manifeste.20 For instance, a 1931 definition of Surrealism within an annual governmental report reads: [Surrealism] aims to liberate the human mind by overcoming various

inconsistencies in human psychology. It claims that the psychological phenomena cannot exist without a relation to the realms of material, that the psychological inconsistencies are reflections of inconsistencies of capitalist society and tyranny … and that the overcoming of the psychological inconsistencies must be conducted in tandem with the overcoming of inconsistencies as proclaimed by Marx.21

socioeconomic

Despite many differences between proletarian art and Surrealism – as

radical politics was the chief interest of the former while radical art was the main focus of the latter – the inability to form a singular group was conditioned by the shift of political climate in the later part of the 1920s, resulting in a distinct idiosyncrasy of Japanese Surrealism. Namely, although it nominally functioned within the movement’s international framework, Surrealism in Japan operated as a dispersed network and its political goals were never singularly and straightforwardly formulated. This was an important reason why Surrealist painting and other visual arts such as photography were mostly practised independently from each other. In other words, Surrealist photography in 1930s Japan, only emerging at the

beginning of the decade, is fundamentally defined by impossibility or, as it were, several impossibilities. First of all, there was no singular Surrealist group to foster it and any public proclamation of a support for or an alliance with Surrealism could lead to surveillance or prosecution. To an extent, this situation mirrors a wider problem of authenticating historical avant-gardes in Japan, which were questioned on many occasions just like Surrealism was. 22 As the notion of avant-garde is mostly understood from a Eurocentric point of view, its very existence in Japan could be considered as another impossibility to account for.23 This discourse – based on seminal postwar studies by such scholars as Matei Câlinescu and Peter Bürger, both following Renato Poggioli’s Theory of the Avant-Garde (1962) – has long since been proved narrow and culturally biased. 24

For instance, on the occasion of the Pompidou Centre’s exhibition Japon des

Avant Gardes 1910–1970 (1987), art historian Takashina Shūji demanded a more complex understanding of the practice in Japan, claiming that ‘the history of avant-garde movements in Japan since approximately 1910 cannot be seen as a set of distant, more or less late and sometimes unnatural echoes of different artistic currents in the European countries’. 25 Such demands have had an impact on the historical narrative of literary Surrealism in Japan, as it is recognized by now that it did not only mirror or mimic the systems of values and social formations imported from abroad but had its own unique position within the country’s modernity.26 However, Japan occupies a specific place within the processes of cultural

diversification of this discourse, acutely pertaining to avant-garde practice during the 1930s. As Eiji Oguma notes, situating Japan within the framework of Orientalism – in which the representation of the East is created by the West – is problematic as Japan was subjected to the orientalizing gaze of the West while concurrently occupying and colonizing various countries in Asia.27 Such a context is relevant to the apprehension of the Japanese avant-garde in general as well as to the conditions of Japanese Surrealism during the 1930s in particular. Whereas the avant-garde groups in the 1920s such as Mavo had a direct relationship with revolutionary politics and were operating in parallel to the proletarian art movement, exercising any form of dissent by Surrealists during the 1930s was made impossible. This situation forces every discussion of Surrealism in 1930s Japan to take into consideration the complex dynamics of the time while acknowledging the fact that it enabled a crucial link between the prewar (senzen) and postwar (sengo) avant-gardes. For Surrealist photography, this link is also important considering that women photographers only started to adopt more active and visible roles in avant-garde circles in Japan after the war.28 Against such a background, one last impossibility that needs to be recognized is what we might regard as its underside or how impossible the avant-garde in Japan was to contain, dismiss and extinguish during the politically turbulent decade between the Manchurian Incident of 1931 and the outset of the Pacific War in 1941.

*** In the Manifeste, Breton situates the Surrealist image with regard to a definition

offered by a French poet, Pierre Reverdy, as ‘a pure creation of the mind’ that ‘cannot be born from a comparison but from a juxtaposition of two more or less distant realities’. 29 Such a definition of the Surrealist image, insisting on the intertwining between a perceived, outer reality and an unconscious, inner state of mind, also celebrates the Surrealists’ admiration for another French poet: Isidore Ducasse, aka Comte de Lautréamont. His phrase from Les chants de Maldoror (1868–1869) that describes a ‘fortuitous encounter upon a dissecting table of

a sewing machine and an umbrella’ formed a base for Surrealist aesthetics,

grounded in the search for chance encounters that would set free any rational measure or code imposed on the mind. 30 Breton expressed his enthusiasm for the potential of photography to deliver such an image many times and as early as in 1920.31 Dalí advanced this enthusiasm further, positioning photography directly in relation to Reverdy’s definition and discovering that it offered an opportunity to experiment with his paranoiac-critical method.32 Photographs were prominently featured in all of the principal Surrealist magazines as well as in Breton’s novels. As a form of the Surrealist image, they share the same goal of disclosing the limited properties of conscious understanding and representation of reality, taking advantage of their special status as both indexical and iconic signs.33 However, a considerable lack of systematic theoretical investigation of the medium by Surrealists themselves, or the somewhat unclear position of photographers within Surrealist circles, as Ian Walker notes, makes any conclusive writing on the subject difficult.34 Although photography is immanent to the discussion of Surrealist painting, at least through Breton’s inclusion of Man Ray into Le Surréalisme et la peinture, the ontological question of Surrealist photography, or what it might stand for, has never been answered conclusively and is still a relevant one. Early attempts at formulating a scholarship around the Surrealist use of

photography in the 1980s, such as Édouard Jaguer’s, indicated how the medium had opened new visual realms as a Surrealist practice by ‘showing what the eye doesn’t see’ and by ‘showing what the eye does see but differently’.35 Whereas such a relationship between Surrealism and photography grounded in the medium’s nature as a quintessential means of modernist visual representation remains unquestioned, other studies at the time made attempts to either redefine Surrealism in view of photography or situate photography within the history of Surrealism.36 Susan Sontag thus describes photography as immanently Surrealist in character in On Photography (1977), whereas Rosalind Krauss establishes the photographic image in the centre of Surrealist action.37 Krauss’s curatorial project L’Amour fou: Photography and Surrealism, undertaken with Dawn Ades and Jane Livingston and seen in New York, Paris and London in 1985 and 1986, provided the vocabulary with which Surrealist photography could be critically addressed. The later studies in the area probed different approaches to it, in terms of a wider sociopolitical relevance and via documentary photographic practices, in view of individual practitioners as well as Surrealism’s global outreach.38 Within this scholarship, Jaguer recognized Japanese artists as important and

included Ei-Kyū and Imai Shigeru in his study.39 This effort was lost to L’Amour fou, in which Krauss and Livingston made clear how they limited themselves to Surrealism’s manifestations in Belgium, England, France and Germany. 40 A more recent exhibition, La Subversion des images: surréalisme, photographie, film (2009–2010), which travelled between Paris, Winterthur and Madrid, signalled

a significant evolution in the field, not only opening up the scope of analysis

of photography’s role within Surrealism to a wider circle of friends, dissidents and rivals related to the core Surrealist group gathered around Breton but also integrating international practices as a relevant feature.41 The exhibition included a photo-collage by Yamanaka Chirū, a Surrealist poet, critic and translator from Japan whose production of visual material was previously not that well known. While such inclusion indicates a return to the route previously paved by Jaguer, it points at a significant gap in the existing scholarship. As the catalogue of the exhibition does not offer much detail about the image or the artist, it evidences how Surrealist photography in Japan has been significantly under-represented in the history of Surrealism. This situation can be best observed in those cases when the existence of literary Surrealism or Surrealist painting in the country is acknowledged without a reflection on the practice of photography, as in the case of Gérard Durozoi’s History of the Surrealist Movement (1997).42 In addition, it also ascertains how the same condition prevails in Japan as well, as the image was mostly unknown in the country prior to its inclusion in the show.43 The knowledge about Surrealist photography in 1930s Japan has been

completely disregarded in photographic histories and reduced to sporadic mentions and elusive comments that are regularly featured in different volumes but scarcely reach beyond individual artists or singular works. 44 This approach also dominates the field of modernist or so-called prewar Japanese photography. Although it might be considered a general issue entailed with the archiving and collecting of original prints from the period, Surrealist photographs are mostly identified individually and within existing modernist categories, such as avantgarde, or subsumed under a preference for a particular style.45 Even though prominent photographers from the period who are known for their individual interests in Surrealism such as Nakayama Iwata, Ei-Kyū and Yasui Nakaji had substantial retrospective exhibitions in Japan since 2000, they did not initiate any coherent discussion in terms of their relationship with the movement.46 Finally, photography has been equally disregarded within the international academic community researching Surrealism in Japan until fairly recently.47 John Solt’s efforts, leading up to an exhibition of Yamamoto Kansuke’s photographs at the Tokyo Station Gallery in 2001, are unprecedented in terms of bringing to the fore the level of achievement of Surrealist photography in Japan and resulted in a continuous interest in the work of this artist, albeit without much regard for the versatility and richness of the field.48 This book’s focus on Surrealist photography in 1930s Japan, therefore,

offers a unique opportunity to gain a better understanding of this practice in the movement’s global context as well as to simultaneously address the partial knowledge of Surrealism’s existence in the country. An important point of departure in the pursuit of this goal is Nihon no shūrurearisumu 1925–1945 (Japanese Surrealism 1925–1945), a pioneering exhibition mounted at the

Nagoya City Art Museum in 1990 that made clear to what extent Surrealism

was practised in Japan among varied artists in the period. A section dedicated to photography in the accompanying catalogue includes a number of primary sources and provides an overview of the chief outlets and individuals.49 The project was followed up by the publication of Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu (Collection of Surrealism in Japan) in fifteen volumes between 1999 and 2001.50 This collection compiles primary sources published during the 1920s and 1930s, mostly in literary and art magazines, dividing them according to subjects and individuals of importance to the movement in Japan. These include volumes on criticism in poetry and visual arts, writings by the chief poets, critics and visual artists, a separate tome on key Surrealist publications and surveys of various important individuals working across different media. The collection tackles the previously noted problems with limited archival access to primary sources in Japanese on an unparalleled scale and it is gradually expanding the knowledge of Surrealist photography in 1930s Japan.51 A volume compiled on the subject of photographic criticism by the Nagoya City Art Museum’s curator Takeba Jō informs this book on a significant scale. As I believe that this practice can only be fully grasped within the original

context in which it appeared, I often combine a close reading of different primary and secondary sources in Japanese with simultaneous research of the archival material of the time (photography magazine collections and correspondences). In my selection of reproduced works I balance out the prioritizing of previously little discussed photographs with in-depth readings of several important and already well-known images. I divide the text into three parts, each comprising two chapters, according to the chief critical terms relevant to the practice: ‘new’, ‘avant-garde’ and ‘plastic’ photography. These particular discursive rubrics are envisaged as methodological tools that enable a comprehensive mapping of Surrealist photography in 1930s Japan and are described in detail in separate sections vis-à-vis the critical positions relevant to the history and theory of art and photography in the country. Rather than following a strict chronological logic, separate chapters are tentatively related to the major events of importance to the topic and are conceived as layers of the narrative. They are addressing individual but always interconnected issues, most important of which is the nature of Surrealist photography in Japan. In the section on ‘new’ photography (shinkō shashin), I discuss the difficulty

that photography’s status in 1930s Japan as a yet to be fully recognized form of artistic practice imposed on Surrealist photography. Flourishing in the aftermath of the touring Film und Foto (1931) and in the wake of the Manchurian Incident (1931), ‘new’ photography is a relevant context for Surrealist photography in Japan as a split within this practice to professionals and amateurs fostered a prominent channel for its emergence. Considering that Surrealist photography was practised in a constellation of different individuals, artistic and photographic

outlets, especially after the Exposition de la confédération des artistes d’avant-

garde, Paris-Tokio (1932), I also question the extent to which group dynamic was relevant to Surrealism in Japan despite its essentially decentred and fragmented nature. In order to do so, I dedicate a chapter to photo-collages, indicating some of the prominent conceptual issues and photographic methods driving their parallel production in the mostly separate photography and art ‘worlds’. The following two chapters focus on ‘avant-garde’ photography (zen’ei

shashin), flourishing in Japan during 1937 and 1938 in the aftermath of a seminal exhibition of international Surrealism, opening only a month before the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in July 1937. I show how Surrealist photographers and critics around the country generated a unique theoretical discussion about the nature of their practice within this context, in relation to such notions as the everyday and displacement, or vis-à-vis abstraction. I describe in detail how photographers in Osaka developed specific approaches to the Surrealist object – Surrealism’s predominant preoccupation in the 1930s – and I unpack the relationship between Surrealist photography and politics by focusing on collaborative projects in Tokyo and Nagoya that sought the ways to engage the viewer in their attempts to offer alternatives to the increasingly censored and ideologically loaded visual culture in this period. Finally, I identify the problems arising from the means through which Surrealist

photography negotiated its public presence in the years leading up to the Pacific War under the umbrella of ‘plastic’ photography (zōkei shashin). The two chapters comprising this part address materiality and locality as important notions to this type of practice, which I perceive as a means enabling the institutional affirmation of the artistic aspirations of Surrealist photographers as well as a relevant instrument allowing the continuation of their work even within the precarious position that they occupied in Japan during 1939 and 1940. Although this discourse was mobilized in an attempt to uphold avant-garde’s autonomy from state politics, it signalled the final stage of oppression of the cultural field during the 1930s. In addition, I partially reframe the book’s chief findings in the postwar period

in the Conclusion, confirming the importance of Surrealist photography in the 1930s to the appropriate understanding of not only Surrealism but also the lineage of twentieth-century avant-garde art in Japan.

PART ONE

'NEW' PHOTOGRAPHY (shinkō shashin)

1

EMERGENCE The beginning of the Shōwa era, or the reign of Emperor Hirohito, appropriately

restarted the clock in 1926 for an atmosphere in which novelty was embraced in Japan in nearly every respect. After the Great Kantō Earthquake almost wiped it from the map in 1923, Tokyo was completely rebuilt and was fostering a fresh urban culture fascinated with ‘modern life’ (modan raifu). Cafes and bars mushroomed around the city, which had recently been connected by its first subway system, catering to ‘modern girls’ (moga) and ‘modern boys’ (mobo) who were eager to show off their Western clothes and hairstyles around the newly opened department stores in such burgeoning parts of the city as Ginza.1 A catchphrase that summarized this liberal energy of the 1920s was ‘erotic, grotesque, nonsense’ (ero guro nansensu), which was fuelled not only by the new forms of urban habitation but also by the new forms of labour and social organization, quickly expanding to other major cities. The times seemed altogether new, and the word for it in Japanese – shinkō – was in frequent use: as early as in 1922 the Shinkō bungaku magazine established it as a synonym for progressive literary styles in culture that was undergoing a period of financial prosperity, urbanization and modernization during the liberal years of the ‘Taishō democracy’ (1912–1926). 2 Shinkō bijutsu, on the other hand, labelled in a similar manner the simultaneous proliferation of innovative artistic forms developing through the ties with European and Russian avant-garde arts – Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism and Dada included.3 The new everyday reality also entailed new sensations, an important topic to

a literary circle known as the New Sensibilities School (Shinkankakuha) that was interested in the sensory experience of modernist city culture. It was a progressive group of writers diverging from the orthodox programme of the Communist Party and opting for a closer association with the European avant-garde movements, including Surrealism, enlisting among other members Yokomitsu Riichi, Kataoka Teppei and Kawabata Yasunari. Kawabata’s The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa (1930), for instance, is a record of the city’s colourful area known for its theatres, nightclubs and particularly mixed demographics. The group was interested in the type of urban practice exercised by Surrealists, who deliberately scouted the streets, cafes, flea markets and shopping arcades for chance encounters with unexpected occurrences in the everyday. It experimented with ‘free associations’

SURREALISM AND PHOTOGRAPHY IN 1930s JAPAN only months after the publication of the Manifeste and identified with those

Surrealist painters in Japan who were attuned to modern life such as Koga.4 This sensitivity manifested in Koga’s continuous reliance on the Japanese

illustrated press for source material in his collage-based work. However, although Koga was closely associated with other Surrealist painters in Japan and drew inspiration from de Chirico and Ernst, this interest also attests at least to his fascination with Dadaist photomontage. In such a manner, Koga engaged the ‘modern life’ through combined interests in Surrealism as well as the so-called machine aesthetics, a quintessential modernist expression of the new age of technological culture that was informing much of the cultural discourse in Japan of the late 1920s and early 1930s.5 This wide range of references resulted in a particular approach to Surrealism on Koga’s part: in the January 1930 issue of Atorie he claims that Surrealism is ‘pure’ art, similar to Suprematism in its search for aesthetically ‘pure’ beauty.6 This identification with a Russian avantgarde movement primarily concerned with geometrical abstraction, as defined by Kazimir Malevich in the 1910s, ascertains Koga’s distancing from socially engaged, proletarian art. Similar to Suprematism, he understands Surrealism to be offering a means to primarily revolutionize everyday life through art, and this inability to divorce it from the vernacular artistic and political contexts rendered Koga’s work as greatly referential to photographers. Their interest in the movement, developing at the turn of the 1930s outside of a single Surrealist group, was also enmeshed in the vernacular culture and politics of the day. Photographic practice that was entwined with the modernist city culture in

Japan at the turn of the decade was ‘new’ as well and flourished in the wake of the Doitsu Kokusai Idō Shashin ten (German International Travelling Photography Exhibition), the photographic part of the Film und Foto that toured Tokyo and Osaka in 1931. The exhibition was originally mounted in Stuttgart in 1928, and it included works by photographers from Europe, the United States and the Soviet Union. It travelled to Zurich, Berlin, Danzig, Vienna, Agram, Munich, Tokyo and Osaka and consisted of historical and contemporary sections, encompassing medical, commercial, photojournalistic, Bauhaus and Surrealist photography with around 1,000 photographs on display. In Japan, the exhibition was organized by artists Murayama Tomoyoshi and Okada Sōzō, who saw the original show while studying in Berlin, and was sponsored by the Asahi shinbun daily.7 Offering an opportunity to view original prints of modernist photography on a large scale for the first time, its overall effect in the country was that of a shock that triggered a whole new approach to practising photography.8 It was a major photographic event, one that marked the moment of before and after or, as one of the best-established photographers of the time, Kimura Ihei, defined it, ‘the border between the old and the new’ in Japanese photography.9 The new approach was termed shinkō shashin, which translates as

‘new’ photography and references ‘modern life’ in Japan together with such

EMERGENCE quintessentially modernist movements as the New Vision. Murayama and Nakada

Sadanosuke, modernist artists who maintained strong links with European and Russian avant-gardes, first articulated this approach to photography in Japan in the late 1920s in a series of articles written for the newly launched Asahi Camera on the work of El Lissitzky and Man Ray. The term also resonated with the activities of the New Photography Study Group (Shinkō Shashin Kenkyūkai), founded in 1930 by the chief editor of Photo Times, Kimura Senichi, after interviewing László Moholy-Nagy on his visit to Europe in 1929.10 The founding of the group coincided with the launch of a monthly column titled ‘Modern Photo’, running in the same magazine and promoting ‘new’ photography that was mostly becoming recognizable not only for the experiments with original angles and framing but also with such techniques as photomontage and photogram or the placing of objects directly on photosensitive paper so as to produce photographic images without the use of a camera.11 As Iizawa Kōtarō points out, shinkō shashin was firmly embedded in the

practices of modern life, which was cultivated in the everyday urban culture flourishing around the city’s cafes, dance halls and revue theatres. It was precisely by the means of increasingly accessible photographic technology that this culture was made visible and legible.12 Such integration of photography with everyday life was enabled by the proliferation of photographic magazines, which coincided with the urbanization of the capital Tokyo. They catered to an entirely new public, that of amateur photographers, also expanding during this period to include new city dwellers such as office workers and public servants.13 However, ‘new’ photography was also fascinated by the machine aesthetics and this fascination was reified in several, by now iconic, projects.14 A year after the Film und Foto travelled around Japan, in a highly acclaimed manifesto-like article ‘Return to Photography’ (1932) a photography critic, Ina Nobuo, praised photography as liberated from the weight of history, tradition and past and insisted that ‘it is a child of the machine culture’, bound to its machine-made properties.15 The radicalism of this practice was primarily based on severing ties between photography and painting, as the main role Ina ascribes to photography is to provide a document of lived reality. Ina’s manifesto was published in Kōga, a Tokyo-based magazine that

served as a platform for pushing the possibilities of ‘new’ photography forward. Launched by Nakayama Iwata together with Akiba Kei, Kimura and Nojima Yasuzō, the magazine evidences the modernist fascination of the camera’s eye with both modern life and machine aesthetics. 16 In the short course of its running over eighteen issues published during 1932 and 1933, it helped establish Japanese photography historians and critics in their own right, outside of any foreign references, and affirmed shinkō shashin as a commercial activity.17 However, the magazine also reveals a division that started to open up within this practice: regardless of Ina’s call for severing ties with other art forms, shinkō

shashin established photography not only as socially relevant but also as prone

to artistic experiment. Vanguard attitudes, reaching beyond the understanding of the medium as a reliable record of reality, began crystallizing simultaneously to its acceptance as a mainstream practice within activities of the photography clubs based in the Kansai region, with its urban zone encompassing Osaka, Kobe and Kyoto often perceived as a countercultural opposite to the capital Tokyo, located in the Kantō region. These included the Ashiya Camera Club (Ashiya Kamera Kurabu) that was formed in the city of the same name near Kobe and the Tanpei Photography Club (Tanpei Shashin Kurabu) in Osaka that was set up as a branch of the Naniwa Photography Club (Naniwa Shashin Kurabu, 1904), both established in 1930. As these attitudes were mostly drawing on a hybrid mixture of contemporary artistic references, primarily the New Sensibilities and Surrealist painting, this split within ‘new’ photography engendered a prominent channel through which Surrealist photography started to emerge in Japan. Several strands of this split and the work of specific photographers that may be considered as representative of them will be discussed in detail in what follows in this chapter, outlining some of the main issues of concern to Surrealist photography in Japan within the specific context of shinkō shashin.

Artistic intentions The activities of the Ashiya club foresaw the impact of ‘new’ photography in such

a manner that their first Tokyo exhibition in April 1931, held at the Asahi shinbun’s headquarters, received higher praise than the simultaneously running Film und Foto.18 Nakayama, a successful commercial photographer with experience of studio work in New York and Paris, founded the club that enlisted Hanaya Kanbei, Benitani Kichinosuke and Matsubara Jūzō, who were all active in the later Kōga. As early as in January 1928, Nakayama defined his interest in ‘pure’ art photography in an article published in Asahi Camera, a personal manifesto that sets the tone of his work upon returning to Japan after ten years abroad.19 Accompanying the text with two untitled photograms, Nakayama explains how his practice runs in parallel to Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray, whom he identifies as artists of kindred orientation.20 Man Ray in particular seems to have been very important to Nakayama, as he brought a number of his photographs back with him from Paris. Simultaneously to the club’s show in Tokyo, Ashiya mounted another exhibition in their hometown in 1931 and for the occasion Nakayama also displayed four of those photographs, the first time Man Ray’s work was seen publicly in Japan.21 In Le Surréalisme et la peinture, Breton placed the value of Man Ray’s

photographs in the suggestive power of the medium, which they managed to harness, rather than in the emotional charge attached to photography’s

seeming possibility of recording a passing moment.22 The text, in its 1928 book

version, also includes two photograms by Man Ray, which are reproduced in Takiguchi’s translation to Japanese.23 Takiguchi wrote a separate article on Man Ray for the August 1931 issue of Photo Times where he tells the famous story of the artist’s allegedly accidental discovery of the photogram technique after he turned the lights on while having several random objects left on a wetted sheet of undeveloped photo paper in his hotel room in 1921.24 Man Ray published these ‘accidents’ the following August under a title Les Champs délicieux (1922), evoking Breton’s and Soupault’s book Les Champs magnétiques (1920). In the same manner as theirs was the first publication of automatic writing, Man Ray’s was intended to be the first volume of automatic photographs.25 In his article, Takiguchi identifies Man Ray as a prominent Surrealist artist and

includes in Japanese translation the part of Le Surréalisme et la peinture that concerns his work. However, although such work was thereby known in Japan as explicitly Surrealist, the precise terms under which Nakayama was interested in or practised photography in relation to Surrealism are difficult to establish. In other words, whereas Man Ray’s approach to photography developed in direct communication with Dada and Surrealism in its exploration of automatism, Nakayama termed the same approach as ‘pure’ art. According to Mitsuda Yuri, this difficulty registers the late development of Surrealist photography in Japan at the turn of the 1930s. 26 This factual situation, which was also recognized at the time of its taking place, was entangled with the generally problematic status of Japanese avant-garde art during the 1930s. In addition, it was also intertwined with the specific status of shinkō shashin, engulfed in this avant-garde under the umbrella of ‘newness’ when practised with an artistic ambition but detached from it when put in the service of journalism. We can observe this difficulty in an exhibition of avant-garde painting, titled in

French as Exposition de la confédération des artistes d’avant-garde, Paris-Tokio, which was initially mounted at the Tokyo Prefectural Art Museum (today’s Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, est. 1926) for two weeks in December 1932. With Breton and André Salmon on the board of organizers, it included 116 works by fifty-six artists coming from different backgrounds but as thirty-one of those were made by fifteen Surrealist artists – such as Arp, de Chirico, Ernst, Masson, Miró, Man Ray and Yves Tanguy – it was the first opportunity to view Surrealist painting in the country.27 In Japanese, the exhibition was titled Pari Tōkyō Shinkō Bijutsu ten (Exhibition of New Art in Paris and Tokyo) and after Tokyo it toured the country with minor differences, travelling to Fukuoka, Kanazawa, Kumamoto, Kyoto, Nagoya and Osaka. On the Japanese side, twenty-four artists exhibited thirtysix works of art, including two photographs by Nakayama, listed as Composition 1 (Kompojishon 1) and Composition 2 (Kompojishon 2).28 Nakayama produced a number of photomontages under the same title at around the same time, complementing his early experiments in photogram technique with references to

Figure 1.1 Nakayama Iwata, Untitled, Asahi Camera, May 1932, cover page, courtesy

of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum. the bohemian experience of modern life – revue dancers, theatre productions,

nightclubs and cafes – as in the case of a cover page for Asahi Camera in March 1932 (Figure 1.1). The particular composition also alludes to Nakayama’s life in Paris, as it includes an ashtray of the Galeries Lafayette department store and a pipe, a motif that paid tribute to the renowned Japanese modernist painter Fujita Tsuguharu, who acted as mentor to Nakayama during his time in Paris and formed various relations with Surrealist circles during the 1930s.29 The exhibition was conceived and mounted by the Association of Avant-Garde

Artists, Paris-Tokyo (Association de artistes d’avant-garde, Paris-Tokio), set up between the Japanese painter Minegishi Giichi, Salmon and Pablo Picasso in

1929, during Minegishi’s stay in Paris.30 The catalogue of the exhibition, printed

in February 1933, features a drawing by Picasso on the cover, a few selected reproductions, a message from the French scholar and administrator Anatole de Monzie, information about the association’s establishment, a list of works, a number of short entries (by Minegishi, Saitō Ioe and Salmon), biographical details of foreign artists and details of different ‘schools’.31 The explanation of the ‘Surrealist school’ (Chōgenjitsuha) – included alongside Purism, Neo-Plasticism, Cubism, Neo-Naturalism, Neo-Fauvism, Musicalism and Realism – takes up the largest proportion of this part of the catalogue and clarifies the movement’s relationship to Dada, its interdisciplinary character (with photography as a relevant practice) as well as its particular alliance with Freud’s writing and fantasy.32 Touring the country on a major scale, the exhibition had a profound impact on the modernist art in Japan, which was especially felt among the younger generation of artists. Considering Breton’s direct involvement and the number of Surrealist artworks on view, it was one of the main fertilizers that helped the movement’s visual arts grow their roots in the country. However, Surrealist works were enmeshed in a wider avant-garde context,

complicating the manner in which they were reported and perceived in public. This is affirmed in the difference of the exhibition titles in French and Japanese, the latter containing the word shinkō and thus avoiding the political charge of the Japanese term for ‘avant-garde’. Referred to in Japanese both in translation – as zen’ei – and by a loanword – avangyarudo – the word first came into use during the 1920s and its political charge becomes apparent in a subtle differentiation of the meaning between the two versions: the Japanese translation had a strong relation with the proletarian vanguard as developed by the members of the Japanese Communist Party while the loanword mostly stood for artistic movements and styles. 33 Although the loanword intended to distinguish the new artistic practices developing in the late 1920s and early 1930s from the proletarian art and literature, the distinction was never clear-cut and precisely defined. In addition, the understanding of Surrealism as a ‘cultural mission’ of Communism complicated further the reference to avant-garde as it started to primarily indicate this movement in the 1930s. In the particular case, regardless of the title under which the exhibition toured

the country in Japanese, the daily press reported on the show using zen’ei and thus indicating its largely Surrealist content.34 This coded terminology registered the changed political circumstances, even from when the Film und Foto was seen a year before. The Manchurian Incident, or the sabotaging of part of a railway track near Mukden (today’s Shenyang) in Manchuria owned by the Japanese South-Manchuria Railway Company by middle-ranking Japanese officers in September 1931, served as a pretext for significant strengthening of military power and the establishment of the Republic of Manchukuo under Japan’s influence in 1932. The incident is considered to have been the first

step leading to the attack on Pearl Harbor and is often understood as the

beginning of what is sometimes referred to as the Fifteen-Year War in Japan (1931–1945).35 In the immediate intensification of censorship rules following the incident, differentiating between proletarian art and modernist avant-gardes became a pressing issue. Even under such terms, Pari Tōkyō made a significant impact on the

development of Surrealist art in Japan. However, the word ‘avant-garde’ did not register widely with regard to photography during the first half of the decade, even in such cases as Nakayama’s, as the newness of shinkō shashin already suggested radical approaches to practice. This discrepancy resulted from the fact that photography was still understood and treated differently in comparison to other forms of fine art, mostly because there was no market for it during the 1920s, which led to the separation between the art and photography ‘worlds’.36 Such an inferior position that photography occupied in Japan at the turn of the decade entailed a particular, ironic paradox. Because it was still not considered an established form of artistic practice, it was only exceptionally featured in those magazines and special volumes discussing Surrealism in the late 1920s and early 1930s.37 Consequentially, the distribution of Surrealist photographs was redirected to the photographic magazines. Paradoxically, this direction rendered photography as less prone to censorship as primarily commercial mass-media outlets such as photographic magazines were not under the same scrutiny as left-wing publications, which were completely suppressed in the years following the Manchurian Incident.38 Nevertheless, as much as photography’s exclusion from fine arts granted avant-garde practices valuable access to mass media, that access came at a cost. As the empire found good use in the socially engaged role that the medium was ascribed with in its colonial expansion, photography was simultaneously becoming a relevant tool of propaganda, which complemented censorship as a different side of the same coin.39 As a result, and ironically, the same commercial photography magazines that circulated Surrealist photography also featured different strands of practice even at the point of its emergence in the 1930s, obfuscating and complicating the manner in which it was to be perceived, if at all. Let us consider this situation in Nakayama’s work. He not only stimulated

artistic experimentation, informed by his interest in such Surrealist photographers as Man Ray in Ashiya, but his photographic compositions also celebrated bohemian urban life, made references to such modernist Japanese painters living in Paris as Fujita and were included in one of the main exhibitions through which Surrealism became known in Japan. On the one hand, such work was prominently featured in the mass media, as in the case of the cover for Asahi Camera in May 1932, under the pretext of ‘pure’ art, coding a particular differentiation between Surrealist and proletarian approaches to artistic practice in Japan. On the other hand, the same issue simultaneously celebrated the

‘remarkable’ achievement of those cameramen who accompanied Japanese

troops in the recent military efforts in East Asia by reprinting a round-table discussion that the magazine organized for them.40 In sum, the split within shinkō shashin created a background against which the materialization of an interest in Surrealism among those photographers in Japan who had artistic aspirations could emerge, but this interest was only tolerated in public when it was coded in language as de facto marginal vis-à-vis the increasingly institutionalized forms of ‘new’ photographic practice. Before coming back to how this situation unfolded during the decade in terms of the vernacular understanding of amateur photography, however, we first need to account for other specific examples, in order to understand the multiplicity of manners in which it was responded to in practice.

Beyond reality At around the time that the Film und Foto toured in Osaka, the city started to foster

some of the most radical approaches to photography in Japan. Koishi Kiyoshi was among photographers of the young generation beginning their careers simultaneously with the rise of shinkō shashin in association with the Naniwa and Tanpei clubs. For the Naniwa’s twenty-first annual exhibition (Namiten), held in Tokyo in 1932, Koishi exhibited a series of photographs that was later released as Shoka shinkei (Early Summer Nerves, 1933), a luxurious volume published in a large format and zinc binding that glorified the medium pairing it with poetry and stylish design. 41 His approach to photography made clear an equal artistic aspiration to that of Nakayama and also based on exploration of photomontage and photogram techniques. Such activities of the Kansai-based photographers in both Ashiya and Osaka

triggered a strong response from the Tokyo-based critics, who did not approve of the work that was adopting an avant-garde approach to photography – in relation to Dada and Surrealism but also the New Sensibilities – or celebrated the popular city culture. For instance, at a meeting held between the core members of Kōga reported on in the February 1932 issue, Ina describes the recent pairing of photography with poetry – referring to Shoka shinkei – as confusing, whereas he understands the work produced by the Ashiya club to be playful.42 In the October issue of the same year, Ina elaborated these remarks, insisting that mechanically reproduced images cannot be considered art.43 Although new photographic techniques allow the use of photography towards artistic ends, such use, for Ina, can never have the same socially meaningful role as ‘normal’ (futsū) photography. The essential problem embedded in such techniques, he claims, is the relationship between photography and reality, complicated by Dada and Surrealism.44

Figure 1.2 Koishi Kiyoshi, Is There Something Funny?, Asahi Camera, January 1934,

page 53, courtesy of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum. Furthermore, Yamawaki Iwao, a photographer trained at the Bauhaus who

came back to Japan in 1930, warned Koishi and the members of the Ashiya club in the following year that they ‘ran the risk of indulging in eroticism and the grotesque’ in two separate articles. 45 ‘Is There Something Funny?’ focused on Koishi’s image of the same title (Nani ga okashii), identifying how photomontage is a ‘play of sensation’ (kankaku no omocha) (Figure 1.2).46 Yamawaki dismisses this technique as producing a ‘grotesque feeling’ but

praises the specific image – in which Koishi displaces cut-outs of several portrait

photographs using photomontage – for its successful attempt at producing a humorous result.47 In the following article, Yamawaki extended his analysis of Koishi’s work to the members of the Ashiya club – including Nakayama and Matsubara – in order to point at the ‘danger’ (kikensei) in what he calls the addictive ‘indulging’ in a pointless, narcissist and Dada-like (dadateki) work.48 Such criticism by Ina and Yamawaki indicates several interconnected cultural and political phenomena. They acknowledge the affiliations between popular urban culture of the late 1920s and early 1930s and those practices of ‘new’ photography aspiring to an artistic expression while dismissing the interest in Surrealism or the New Sensibilities behind them as politically ‘dangerous’, due to the intensified censorship following the Manchurian Incident. Koishi first replied to the criticism in an address to the thirtieth annual meeting

of the Naniwa club, published in Shashin shinpō in September 1934 together with ten photographs under a joint title Daydream (Hakujitsumu).49 He observes that photography critics, including those writing for Kōga and Asahi Camera, often voice opinions that are divorced from practice. In addition, he compares the new series to the previous Shoka shinkei as equally containing ‘grotesque, slight nonsense and a synthesis of unconscious sensation and conscious construction’.50 In terms of Is There Something Funny?, he explains how the composition foregrounds his interest in the meaningless laughter that the sitters would burst into when he took their portraits, something that Roland Barthes later described as a type of automatic posing generated by the presence of a camera. 51 In the later ‘Expressions of New Sensibility: Going Beyond Reality’, however, he explicitly states that his work draws from Surrealism: although he makes a clear reference to the New Sensibilities in the title, he insists that the ‘world of Surrealism’ (shūruriarizumu no sekai) is an answer to photography’s grounding in reality, which he understands as problematic due to the fact that its sole practice as ‘reportage’ inevitably leads to propaganda.52 To Koishi, the claim that photography is necessarily embedded in reality due to its indexical, scientific nature is outdated and the practice needs to advance beyond reality. ‘We need to expand the sensibility of a free Surrealist world,’ he writes, ‘as that is where a promise of artistic possibility lies.’53 Koishi’s explicit reference to the grotesque and nonsensical, his evocation of

the New Sensibilities and recognition of Surrealism as the origin of his work put him in opposition to the main Tokyo critics of shinkō shashin, as by that time they had mostly moved on to embrace photojournalism, which was starting to become the predominant practice in the 1930s. First introduced as a vanguard method for breaking away from the limiting faculties of the soft-focused Pictorialism, ‘new’ photography rapidly became a mainstream practice. Furthermore, in the five years between the Film und Foto and Koishi’s Satsuei: Sakuga no shingihō (Photography: A New Method for Image-Making, 1936) –

a volume offering step-by-step explanations for the production of photograms,

photomontages, solarized images or photographs shot from bird’s- and worm’s-eye perspectives – it was not only practised as an innocent pastime of amateur photographers but was rapidly embraced by state propaganda.54 The use of photography for the construction of nationalist ideology in the domain of visual culture in 1930s Japan had several specialized outlets, such as Manshū gurafu, established in 1932 in the so-called puppet state of Manchukuo, or the magazine NIPPON, launched in 1934 by the Japan Workshop (Nippon Kōbō) agency, which was projecting the idea of an amiable Japan to its foreign readership over the course of its running until 1944.55 These outlets championed the newly coined term hōdō shashin, essentially a translation of ‘photojournalism’, which also connoted a socially engaged role of photography. Promoters of the practice included most of the photographers and critics previously involved with Kōga, such as Ina and Kimura, who were exceedingly active in organizing exhibitions and publishing special volumes on the subject, supported by public agencies and industrial capital.56 The shift within ‘new’ photography’s orientation, juxtaposed with the change

in foreign policies in the country from the support to Allied forces in the First World War to signing of the Anti-Comintern Pact with Germany in 1936, reflected the change from the liberal 1920s to the militarist 1930s. Against a permanent ‘state of emergency’ (hijōji), a new catchphrase that was on everybody’s lips in the years following the Manchurian Incident, increased control of city culture – films, cafes, dance halls and music revues – was enforced for a seeming protection of public morals but was in fact an essential element of the governmental suppression of freedom of thought. 57 Under such conditions, any reference to the catchphrase ‘erotic, grotesque, nonsense’ in the aftermath of the ‘incident’ was considered politically subversive and their ‘indulgence’ was publicly dismissed, just as Surrealism was. Koishi’s response to Ina and Yamawaki was thus a criticism of photography’s increasing use in propaganda, for which he offers a solution in an unconstrained artistic practice grounded in Surrealism that is intertwined with modernist forms of urban culture. The origin of his interest in Surrealism and especially photomontage, however, is not based on original Surrealist texts but is established in relation to Koga’s Surrealist painting. Koishi quotes Koga’s work, seen at the annual exhibition of the Second Division Society in 1929, as a direct influence behind such works as Is There Something Funny?.58 This reference to a Japanese Surrealist painter as a point of validation of Koishi’s practice confirms a multifaceted emergence of Surrealist photography in Japan or its relation to not only simultaneously developing urban culture and shinkō shashin but also Surrealist painting. Whereas in Nakayama’s case this reference is only implied, through a preference for ‘pure’ art that was also expressed by Koga, Koishi expresses it in explicit terms, indicating Surrealism’s increased visibility in Japan following the Pari Tōkyō exhibition.

Abandoning control The entanglement of these coinciding points of emergence for Surrealist

photography in 1930s Japan – modern life, modernist photography and Japanese Surrealist painting – informed individual artistic practices in the Kansai region. Without much doubt, there was an explicitly negative view of them among the chief critics of ‘new’ photography, with which any professional photographer with a commercial career, such as Nakayama and Koishi, had to battle. Those individuals who primarily considered themselves to be artists and were not dependent on the photography ‘world’, however, engaged more openly with Surrealism from within shinkō shashin, and we can observe this situation in Ei-Kyū’s work. However, as we shall see in this example, although Surrealist painting was increasingly popular following Pari Tōkyō, a gradual oppression of the freedom of thought during the 1930s started to impose limitations not only on verbal proclamations of a Surrealist orientation but also on figuration, which also started to become coded through abstraction. The August 1930 edition of Photo Times featured a contribution from

Hideo Sugita, ‘For a Free Production of Photograms’, in the ‘Modern Photo’ column.59 It was the first time that Ei-Kyū wrote about photography and the first time that he published his own work to accompany the text, still under his real name. Nineteen years old at the time and originally from the southwest island of Kyūshū, he had already started writing art reviews and criticism for the art magazines such as Atorie and Mizue in 1927. ‘Free Production’ coincided with his enrolment in a photography school run by the company Oriental, the publisher of the magazine.60 Ei-Kyū writes from a background in fine arts, criticizing photography’s subordinate position to painting. This position at the time was dictated by Pictorialism, an internationally established mode of photographic practice that was still dominating the photographic circles in Japan at the turn of the 1930s, with prominent figures including Fukuhara Shinzō, despite its much earlier disappearance in other countries around the world. Its soft focus, often achieved in post-production, as well as its romantic subject matter echoed the realist approach of salon painting, triggering the questioning of photography’s authentic features. For Ei-Kyū, the photogram technique offered the medium a possibility of liberation from the indexical boundaries immanent to its mechanical apparatus, which also separates him from the ‘new’ photography critics in Japan who celebrated its mechanical properties. He contextualizes his own work published in the text as exemplary of such an approach, which allows him to make ‘Surrealist compositions’ (shūru rearisutikuna konpojon) from magazine cut-outs.61 In other words, whereas the title suggests opening up of the image to chance,

it is not only the camera-less technique but also the displacement of content through collage that allows Ei-Kyū to achieve ‘Surrealist compositions’, an

example of his early experiments with automatism. In the text, he admits that the

free use of the material to achieve the content displacement might be considered an unorthodox approach to the photogram technique and that his particular interest in ‘Surrealist compositions’ deliberately places him in the position of a ‘stranger’.62 Ei-Kyū thus manages to establish a unique approach to the production of photograms, even within the first text written about photography, by distancing himself from the mainstream and coming up with a specific technique through which he experimented with automatism, combining photogram production with elements of Surrealist collage as early as in 1930. Four out of five images accompanying the text (including the image seen on the first page) distinctly feature bare female legs, cut out from the popular press and exposed to light while placed on photosensitive paper (Figure 1.3). This feature resonates strongly with records of popular culture provided by the members of New Sensibilities, as bare legs evoked the ‘modern girl’ and her urban appearance, symbolizing an erotic encounter with a body in motion that was a prominent sensation of modernist urban culture.63 Although Ei-Kyū clearly elaborates photogram as a Surrealist method that enables him to transgress the medium-specific limitations of photography, his imagination is embedded in such culture, a modernity already underwritten with specific values and meanings in its Japanese context. Ei-Kyū’s work develops in a similar manner to Koishi’s, as he does not depart

from the original Surrealist texts or their translations into Japanese but from his exposure to the practice of Surrealist painters in Japan, such as Koga and Fukuzawa. In a text published in the December 1927 issue of Atorie he makes his appreciation of Koga’s work evident, praising it for showing ‘a dream of future’.64 After Koga’s premature death in 1933, Ei-Kyū also made clear his high regard for Fukuzawa in a letter to a close friend and later biographer Yamada Kōshun in 1935. Only at the point of this letter does he assert how he started making a daily effort of reading Cahiers d’art, wishing to know more about Surrealism. 65 He also evaluates Fukuzawa’s work as the best achieved Surrealist practice in the visual arts of Japan and makes a remark that the newness of his approach is yet to be appreciated in the country.66 Differently put, as both Koga and Fukuzawa used the illustrated press in their work they became the chief source of inspiration for EiKyū and initiated his interest in Surrealism.67 However, even in 1935 the practice was still considered new to fine arts, as Nakayama and Koishi, who by that point had made a substantial amount of work using photogram and photomontage techniques, were primarily considered to be photographers and not artists. Ei-Kyū’s frustration at how the work of Japanese Surrealist painters was not

adequately appreciated drew him to draft an ambitious monograph on Koga in the same year. However, as he was struggling to write, this project resulted in a more focused image production and his debut under the name of Ei-Kyū in 1936.68 His first exhibition and collection of works were titled Nemuri no riyū (The Reason for Sleep), indicating dreams or the unconscious state of the mind as the

Figure 1.3 Ei-Kyū, ‘For a Free Production of Photograms’, Photo Times, Vol. 8, August 1930, page 93, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (30008–068).

origin of his production. The collection, fully titled in French as Raison du sommeil,

Photo-dessin par Q.Ei, Album 1, was published in forty copies, simultaneously with an exhibition in Tokyo, held under the Japanese title in April 1936. Both the title of the exhibition and the artist’s new name were godfathered by established figures in the Tokyo art world, Hasegawa Saburō and Toyama Usaburō, whom the artist approached after producing around a hundred works in a period of several months towards the end of 1935. Following the debut in Tokyo, the exhibition was also seen in Osaka and Ei-Kyū’s native Miyazaki in the same year. The public exposure drove him to produce another hundred or so images and gave Ei-Kyū the opportunity to meet with the most prominent avant-garde artists and critics of the time, including Takiguchi, Yoshihara Jirō and Kurt Seligmann, who had just had an exhibition at Tokyo’s Mitsukoshi department store in the previous year.69 Mixing photography, photogram, collage and drawing, ten works included in the collection show the recent development of the same project that Ei-Kyū started experimenting with at the turn of the decade but mostly render all of its visual references abstract (Figure 1.4). With Nemuri no riyū, Ei-Kyū established his name and carved out a specific

place in photogram production, calling his images ‘photo-drawings’ (photodessin). Their Surrealist origin was suggested not only in the title of the exhibition and the accompanying collection but also in the process he used, in which EiKyū deliberately made work without much thinking, in intense and short periods of time, suggesting automatism as a primary method. As the compilation only offered a small selection of Ei-Kyū’s entire production, his specific interests are clarified separately, across different publications, and attest to his two main interests: ‘modern life’ and automatism. In terms of the former, a text published in the July 1936 issue of Home Life reaffirms modern urban culture as important to Ei-Kyū, as he claims that new methods of expression are necessarily required to respond to the new modes of urban living imposed by electric trains and neon lights.70 As for the latter, the final elaboration of automatism as the process behind the production of photo-drawings can be found in ‘On Reality’, published in the June 1937 issue of Atorie.71 He describes the process in this article as characterized by a contingent moment in which these images are made, outside of any conscious control.72 Questioning the mechanical premises of the photographic apparatus celebrated in ‘new’ photography by the critics such as Ina, he affirms a conscious application of automatism by ascribing to art the ultimate goal of ‘realising reality beyond the conscious conclusions of thinking’. 73 However, whereas his early experiments explicitly mobilize motifs that visualize popular culture, as in the case of bare female legs, the new work substantially parts with representation, often not providing any clues to the potential reading of the images. In other words, whereas Ei-Kyū clearly articulates the ties with both urban culture and Surrealism in his writing, the figuration of the photo-drawings is difficult to read as Surrealist once it is divorced from text and viewed on its own.

Figure 1.4 Ei-Kyū, from The Reason for Sleep, 1936, photo © Yokohama Museum of Art.

Professionals and amateurs nt this point, a problem of what precisely constitutes a Surrealist photograph

comes to the fore. As both Krauss and David Bate have noted in their pursuit of this question, presupposing such a quality on the part of the image itself disregards the variety of photographs used within Surrealism.74 The vagueness and complexity of the very term, therefore, are further complicated by the fact that no singular

photographic category subsumes it. As Bate explains, Surrealists used different

types of photographs and it is through the ways in which they are deployed within Surrealism and not from the photographs themselves that an attempt at coherently identifying what Surrealist photography might be should depart.75 As we know by now, Surrealism in Japan was dispersed in smaller groups

across the country and was contingent to the vernacular politics and culture, most importantly the suppression of any potentially dissident content during the 1930s. With this knowledge in mind, if we drew the boundary within shinkō shashin as described above, the main photographic context in the first part of the decade, we risk leaving behind all the practices discussed thus far as unorthodox in their relation to Surrealism. As the varied ways through which photography was mobilized within Surrealism in Japan was often deliberately obscured and can sometimes only be determined in texts written by photographers themselves, we seem to be left no choice in the matter but to consider the Surrealist quality on the part of certain images. This situation raises a complex issue, as extending the scope of Surrealist photographs in this manner opens up the space of analysis to the possibly endless area of amateur photography, which was fascinated by the same modes of modernist photography that were also mobilized within Surrealism, such as photomontage and photogram. Again, however, the very status of amateur photography was somewhat specific in Japan and requires us to acknowledge the vernacular history of the medium in the country. As before, we can observe this twofold issue in a concrete example, this time through Matsubara’s work. Given that the Ashiya club was at the forefront of ‘new’ photography, it is

unsurprising that it was also leading the way for the acceptance of photography in artistic circles. Some of the club’s members who were to gain public recognition, such as Hanaya, later claimed that the interest in Surrealism and the avantgarde was no more than a rich people’s pastime in Ashiya. 76 However, those photographers from the same club who primarily pursued artistic approaches to their work (however commercial) through this interest, such as Nakayama and Matsubara, were among the first photographers in Japan to achieve the status of artists. In 1939, they both exhibited at Kokuten, an annual show of an artistic group originally called the National Creative Painting Association (Kokuga Sōsaku Kyōkai), which set up a photo section that year.77 However, as much as Nakayama’s relation to Surrealism can be established through his appreciation for Man Ray, his connections with Fujita and his participation in Pari Tōkyō, Matusbara’s work was almost exclusively distributed without any textual explanation. A son of the local konbu (kelp) merchant, Matsubara joined the Ashiya club around 1933 following Nakayama’s efforts to promote photography in the city.78 He was a contributor to Kōga and exhibited regularly with the club, gaining acknowledgement mostly for his experiments with the Surrealist objects in the format of photo-collages.79 After the magazine stopped running, he produced a series of untitled collages that were regularly seen in

Figure 1.5 Matsubara Jūzō, Untitled, Japan Photographic Annual, 1934–1935, page 9,

courtesy of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum. The Japan Photographic Annual, published by the Asahi shinbun since 1924

in order to showcase the best-achieved photographs from around the country. These collages were featured regularly from 1934 through 1939 and constitute a coherent body of work that culminated in his inclusion in Kokuten in 1939. In the 1934–1935 edition, Matsubara’s collage is embedded in the modernist

experience of city life, referencing film and theatre productions below two female figures who are positioned against a nocturnal cityscape in the background: Madame X, a play written in 1908 by Alexandre Bisson that was adopted for the screen several times by the 1930s, as well as Anatole Litvak’s musical Das Lied einer Nacht, released in 1932 (Figure 1.5). It is a striking assemblage of varied

Figure 1.6 Matusbara Jūzō, Untitled, Japan Photographic Annual, 1936, page 93,

courtesy of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum. elements that contrast the old and the new in the inclusion of both the modern

cityscape and the antique pillar as well as in the positioning of the two female figures, seen from the back and the front and wearing traditional Japanese as well as Western clothing. The male figure, branded with a letter ‘O’ on his chest and seen in the foreground, is possibly sourced from the advertisements for Charles Atlas’s body building course that was popular at the time, and like the female figure above it, has the head substituted by another magazine cut-out. Matsubara’s contribution to the same magazine in 1936 is an equally ambitious and complex composition in which symbols of modernist science and urbanity are juxtaposed with those of eroticism and tradition in a similar contrast between the old and the new, this time laid out in the lower and upper parts of the image (Figure 1.6). Urban high-rises tower over the traditional rooftops whereas an

Figure 1.7 Matsubara Jūzō, Liberated Fantasy, Japan Photographic Annual, 1936–1937,

page 82, courtesy of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum. instrument of scientific measurement tops a decapitated mannequin doll. The

central element of the image – a portrait photograph of a smiling woman with a clock wheel overlaying the left eye and with a measuring chart substituting the left side of the face – brings the contradictions together, showing a hybrid of traditional beauty and modernist reliance on time. Matsubara repeatedly used the same elements for the construction of his collages. We encounter the same male figure in the January 1935 issue of Shashin geppō, this time wearing a chain around its neck that is connected to more parts of a disassembled clock and carrying a sign ‘Out of Order’. Also, we encounter the same antique pole from 1934–1935, as well as the same mannequin doll and the same clock wheel from 1936 in the 1936–1937 issue of the Annual (Figure 1.7). Titled as Liberated

Fantasy (Kaihō sareta kūsō), the image is explained as ‘a love verse’ in a potential

reference to the French poet Arthur Rimbaud. 80 Whereas this intertextual use of the same elements serves at times as an indication of potential readings of different images – as the letter ‘O’ suggests the male body is equally ‘Out of Order’ in both collages published in 1935 – they remain inconclusive. However, at least the images seen in the Annual for two consecutive years, in 1934–1935 and 1936, make a distinct visual commentary on the tensions opening up in the modernist celebration of novelty – between the old and the new, culture and nature, as well as the body and the machine – highlighting fragmentation and destabilization of traditional cultural forms in the Japanese experience of modernity.81 Matsubara is rather cynical about these tensions: the ‘modern girl’ steps over a large flower in 1934–1935, whereas a flying object seen in 1936 seems to be targeting the high-rises. As in Koishi’s case, he is also critical about the modernist fascination with speed and machinery, used increasingly to bring forth a war mentality by the proto-militarist government of the time.82 Unlike Koishi’s, however, Matsubara’s criticism is almost entirely devoid of any textual articulation and relies on the viewer to understand a given set of visual references in order to read the image appropriately. In a rare article that Matsubara wrote about his work, published in the

February 1939 issue of Asahi Camera, he describes in detail the ‘tricks’ he uses for the production of three accompanying collages and only mentions in passing how his main interest lies in the relation between reality and fantasy.83 This interest seems to be the only reference to Surrealism that Matsubara offers as a background to his work, which regularly appears alongside Nakayama’s. His writing is only published once he is about to be included in a prominent exhibition but, interestingly, does not reflect on the fact that all the collages in the article use cut-outs of bare female legs. In other words, although it is difficult to ascertain a definitive connection between Matsubara’s work and Surrealism, his compositions operate within the set of critical and visual references that were already established by the other photographers aligning with the movement within the context of shinkō shashin, such as Nakayama, Koishi and Ei-Kyū. Regardless of the deliberate obscuring of its Surrealist meaning in text and the reliance on the image to convey it, we cannot but acknowledge that this type of practice operated within a network of photographers of Surrealist orientation. Clearly, this situation indicates that mostly independent positions that different Surrealist mediums such as photography and painting held in Japan also resulted in a partial separation of theory and practice. In terms of shinkō shashin, considering that it often distanced from the cross-pollination between different mediums, this separation reveals the restrictions that any singular perspective – including the history of photography – imposes on the appropriate understanding of Surrealist photography in the country. Matsubara’s collages not only function on the basis of a visual ‘code’ operating in an assemblage of associated photographers but

also sit within a wider Surrealist context that is not limited to the photography

‘world’. Whereas we will explore some of the elements of this wider Surrealist network in the following chapter, we first need to account for the fact that any of such singular perspectives – be it photography or painting – requires additional understanding of its essential structural organization and means of operation in Japan. In his review of the 1939 Kokuten, Nakada reports that it included thirty-

nine photographs and mentions that a number of them were Surrealist (shūru), but he finds it necessary to stress that this does not mean that the show supported ‘dilettantism’.84 As this report indicates, by the time that those ‘new’ photographers who continuously exercised their interest in Surrealism started becoming recognized as artists towards the end of the decade, they were still perceived as dilettantes not only in the professional, photojournalist circles – where artistic approaches to photography were interpreted as retrograde through the prism of such earlier forms of practice as Pictorialism – but also within the separate, art ‘world’. Such a situation brings forth the relationship between amateur photography and avant-garde as closely related during the 1920s and 1930s.85 As Clément Chéroux explains, prior to the development of professional photojournalism, the word ‘amateur’ referred to photographers in general and did not carry a pejorative connotation.86 Only later, as the development of photographic technology at the turn of the twentieth century enabled the proliferation of the so-called family photography did ‘dilettantism’ start to degrade the status of amateurs. According to Chéroux, avant-garde movements such as Constructivism and Surrealism adopted different approaches, with the former preferring the professional amateur’s well-achieved imagery in such nineteenthcentury subgenres as botanical, astrological or scientific photography and the latter opting for the ‘dilettante’ approach of the family photographer (by such photographers as Paul Nougé and Claude Cahun).87 In Japan, we seem to be encountering a somewhat different situation, with

this discourse continuing even into the 1930s. Judging from Nakada’s text, ‘dilettantism’ was applied not only to amateur photography in general but also to the strand of ‘new’ photography that was developing its artistic or avant-garde aspirations through a relationship with Surrealism. ‘New’ photography claimed a severing of ties with other art forms and celebrated its mechanical features, isolating itself from multimedia, hybrid experiments that combined photography and painting or photography and poetry. This situation was mainly based on a different motivation in the practice of photography, with the socially relevant and commercial potential of photojournalism seen as paramount in the Tokyo circles.88 The tensions forming between photojournalist and artistic strands of shinkō shashin were thus manifesting as a division among photographers between professional and amateur, with the latter seen as prone to artistic experimentation. The state’s indifference towards the visual arts against the increased censorship

of mass media in the first part of the decade must have also played a part in this

partial migration of ‘new’ photographers of Surrealist orientation into the artistic circles.89 In such a way, Matsubara’s seeming independence from Surrealism offered him the means to publish highly provocative material as late as in 1939. The emergence of Surrealist photography in Japan within the context of shinkō

shashin in the first part of the 1930s, we might conclude, was caught up in a double bind between the increasing censorship of any politically engaged activity and photography’s exclusion from the institutionalized forms of art. As photography was mobilized towards Surrealist ends in 1930s Japan not only through various facets but also in different parts of the country, it engendered heterogeneous and multiple approaches, uses and ways of engagement, with different practitioners adopting different ways to deal with and overcome the impossibility of their work. In some cases more than others, this situation led to the increasing reliance on the image to convey a Surrealist content or a Surrealist message, often by relying on the set of visual references embedded in the modern urban culture of the day. The isolation of Surrealist photography from the work of a single Surrealist group sometimes led to the separation of the image from text, which also registered as an indication of an artistic aspiration, especially in the cases where exhibiting the work played a relevant role in its realization. Matsubara’s example is here again relevant as a considerable number of his known original prints were produced in significantly large sizes (of approximately 45 × 35 cm), offering a rich and authentic viewing experience. In such a manner, although Surrealist photography might have developed independently from Surrealist literature or painting within the context of shinkō shashin, by the mid-1930s the partial separation from theory within this context allowed Surrealist photography to evolve into a visually arresting form of artistic practice. As such, it was not only encountered in print but was also seen in prominent exhibitions around the country, demanding attention and sensitizing its viewership to a certain manner of producing and using images. It thus appears that there were not only different types of Surrealist photographs in Japan but also different types of Surrealist photographers. Those like Matsubara who operated from remote positions may not have had the means of participating more actively in Surrealist circles that were mostly bound to larger urban centres. However, they could also fall off the radar of censorship more easily and thus have a better chance for public exposure. These photographers performed a significant role for the distribution and proliferation of visual forms of Surrealist arts in the country, where Surrealist photography often occupied a close position to Surrealist painting regardless of their nominal separation.

2

PHOTO-COLLAGES ‘Newness’ reappears in the name of the New Plasticity Art Association (Shin

Zōkei Bijutsu Kyōkai), assembled in September 1934. The group was the first artistic collective in Japan to embrace Surrealist painting, and it formed in the aftermath of Pari Tōkyō from thirteen members previously belonging to the Independent Art Association (Dokuritsu Bijutusu Kyōkai, 1930).1 It underwent different structural changes and had a constantly fluctuating membership but before running its course by the end of 1937, it brought together some of the artists and critics of key importance to the articulation of Surrealist photography in 1930s Japan. In terms of relevant artists, Imai Shigeru was a founding member and Shimozato Yoshio joined in December 1935, whereas the most prominent Surrealist critics, Takiguchi and Yamanaka, became members in 1936. The group’s name references Neo-Plasticism, a Dutch artistic movement

founded by Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian, among others, in 1917 in order to articulate an interest in pure abstraction, primarily in architecture and painting. Given that parallel and often conflicting interests in Surrealism and abstraction was one of New Plasticity’s main characteristics, this reference might not be surprising, especially as Van Doesburg’s work was seen in Japan in the Pari Tōkyō exhibition. However, these interests were chiefly manifested in different Surrealist preferences of the group’s members: Dalí’s realism on the one hand (favoured, for instance, by Fujita Tsuruo) and Arp’s and Miró’s abstraction on the other (among such artists as Imai and Shimozato).2 Furthermore, it was not only Neo-Plasticism that the group was referring to but also a particular background for ‘plasticity’ in 1920s Japan, formulating in relation to such modernist notions as gestaltung that broadly reads as ‘design’ but also signifies a social purpose. 3 In the avant-garde discourse of that time this word mainly connoted the relevance of everyday experience to revolutionary politics and social change, especially in the context of proletarian art.4 New Plasticity, therefore, combined interests in different forms of Surrealist visual arts with a desire to bring art and life closer together. The group also published a magazine under the same name, Shin zōkei,

running for four issues from October 1935 to March 1937, and it contains more clues to the specificity of this group. As Omuka Toshiharu explains, it attests to its two main intentions: to offer an alternative to the existing programme of public exhibitions and to do so by expanding its outreach to, architecture and

SURREALISM AND PHOTOGRAPHY IN 1930s JAPAN photography.5 Whereas the former intention was a straightforward continuation

of the anti-academicism set out by Pari Tōkyō, the group’s (and magazine’s) name mainly indicates the latter one. In terms of photography specifically, although the exhibition marked its indecisive merging with painting under the ambiguous notion of avant-garde, ‘newness’ did not easily translate between the photography and art ‘worlds’ at that time. Rather, it was through a parallel inclusion into the broad scope of arts plastiques, a term that still holds a close approximation to ‘visual arts’ in French, that photography became an institutionally accepted form of artistic practice. For example, annual exhibitions of the Free Artists’ Association (Jiyū Bijutsuka Kyōkai) in 1937 and 1939 included ‘photo plasticity’ among the artworks suitable for submission, alongside the better-recognized categories of oil painting, watercolour and drawing.6 Therefore, New Plasticity not only encouraged a collective exploration of an advanced understanding of Surrealism in terms of the topical preferences of the movement in the 1930s but it was also one of the first artistic groups in Japan to encourage and support the use of photography. According to Mitsuda, it is through an interest in photo-collage among Japanese

artists associated with Surrealism that the blurring of distinctions between art and photography started to take place during the decade. 7 We can authenticate this claim by looking at the work of New Plasticity members only, with Imai and Yamanaka discussed below in such terms. Although New Plasticity was the first artistic group of Surrealist orientation in Japan to support photography, this was mainly driven by the interest of certain members in photo-collage. As we shall see throughout this chapter, such an interest in photo-collage is evident across different Surrealist groups establishing throughout the decade, as well as among photographers associated with those groups in various manners, authenticating the practice of Surrealism across and beyond the separate art and photography ‘worlds’. However, in the same manner that we made a note of the vernacular Japanese history of photography in the previous chapter, here we need to take into account the particular organizational forms or artistic collectives specific to Japanese art history.8 New Plasticity and other art associations (bijutsu kyōkai) that were of essential importance to Surrealism in 1930s Japan catered to multiple functions, including the possibility of exhibiting and the exercise of still-emerging professional roles such as art criticism, often performed by artists themselves.

Two-way mirrors The structure of collage, which does not function in relation to a single referent

but forms a constellation of possible meanings under a system of relations of its elements, is of central importance to Surrealism as it operates similarly to a dream.9 Surrealism took its cue for such an understanding of collage from

PHOTO-COLLAGES Freud, who identified how a dream is constituted from various elements that

are assembled in the dream-work through processes of condensation and displacement.10 In such a manner, although collage is inherited in Surrealism from Dada, its particular similarity to dream-work, and an ability it offers to the forging of free and unconstrained juxtapositions, informs its Surrealist use. It was Ernst who first started to explore this potential of collage, displayed at his solo exhibition in the Au Sans Pareil bookshop in Paris in 1921. 11 After that, collage was instituted to a quintessential Surrealist method and was theorized as such in Aragon’s La peinture au défi, a text published to accompany a group exhibition of collages by Surrealist artists such as, among others, Dalí, Ernst and Miró, mounted at the Galerie Goemans in Paris in 1930.12 A thorough understanding of the Surrealist use of collage can be noted in

New Plasticity from very early on and is articulated in Imai’s ‘Montage in Painting’, published in the first volume of Shin zōkei in October 1935. Imai situates the origin of montage in Russian avant-garde film but places the specific problem it poses to painting in its usage in Dada.13 Arguing that Surrealism offers the most recent and the most advanced treatment of this problem, he cites Aragon’s distinction between two types of collages from La peinture au défiand aligns his own practice with Ernst’s.14 According to Aragon, the first type of collage, in which the pasted element is chosen for its material properties, does not amount to more than aesthetically pleasing the viewer. The second type is valued for its representation of the object, anticipating ‘the collage to come’ in its ascribing the visual depiction the role of a word.15 It is this latter type that Ernst helped establish and that Aragon sees to be posing a challenge to painting. As a gesture, it offers a foretaste of a kind of practice in which artists will no longer not only mix their colours or have others apply them to the canvas but also even draw.16 Imai experimented with this interest in his practice, exhibiting a series of collages

at New Plasticity’s second exhibition, held at the Tokyo Prefectural Museum in January 1936, including A Cheerful Traveller (Yukaina ryokōsha) (Figure 2.1). The image shows a circular object placed next to a seascape, alongside two pairs of bare female legs seen atop of a barren mountainscape. Neither the title nor the elements of the composition reveal much in terms of the intended meaning. The collage functions instead as an open invitation to possible interpretations, using photography precisely towards this end, again, similar to Ernst’s work.17 One such interpretation is offered by Jaguer, who reads it as a reference to the phrase ‘dance on the volcano’, evoking Richard Eichberg’s film of the same title (Der Tanz auf dem Vulkan, 1920) and indicating primarily a precarious state of affairs. Given Imai’s interest in treating the elements of collage as though they were words, this reading is not unlikely. Another possible interpretation, however, is hinted at in Imai’s article published in the second issue of Shin zōkei, where he makes sure to highlight how the Surrealist use of collage not only involves the transformation of printed matter into the work of art (as in Cubism

Figure 2.1 Imai Shigeru, A Cheerful Traveller (1936), Photo Times, Vol. 15, October

1938, page 53, courtesy of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum.

and Dada) but also achieves Breton’s definition of Surrealism as a ‘settlement’

between the conscious and dreaming states of mind.18 The doubling of legs in the collage, as well as their rendition as bigger than the mountains below, primarily suggests the existence of binary oppositions and thus resonates with Breton’s well-known call for their transcendence in the Second manifeste, which reads: ‘Everything leads us to believe that there exists a certain point of the mind at which life and death, the real and the imaginary, past and future, the communicable and the incommunicable, the high and the low, cease to be perceived as contradictions.’19 The circular object in the image, entangling and rendering inoperative any opposition, thus possibly suggests the same type of settlement of the doubled elements, or binary oppositions, in Imai’s image. A direct response to Breton’s call to undo binary oppositions is even more

apparent in a pair of collages that Yamanaka exhibited at the fifth and the last exhibition of New Plasticity in March 1937, also held at the Tokyo Prefectural Museum, as well as at the Shin Zōkei Nagoya ten (Nagoya Exhibition of New Plasticity), held at a gallery space on the eighth floor of the Matsuzakaya department store in June of the same year.20 The Japanese title of one of them, Light Hearted Sea (Kigaru no umi), suggests that it is the same collage that was included in La Subversion des images, under a title in French that reads Il y a un océan facile, referring to the textual part of the image (Figure 2.2). Alongside

Figure 2.2 Yamanaka Chirū, Il y a un océan facile, 1937, RMN-Grand Palais, Centre

Pompidou, Paris © Yamanaka Keiichi. the cut-outs, the collage features a cameraman in the background wearing a

swimming suit and filming from a diving board two nude figures, positioned in the foreground with their backs to each other and standing within a hand mirror held by a pair of female hands, with the viewer-facing figure inscribed with the signs of

the zodiac. The word ‘ocean’ from the first cut-out possibly references Breton’s

photo-poem from 1935, featuring the phrase L’Océan glacial that stands for an ‘icy ocean’, but also the Arctic Ocean on the front of a tobacco packaging.21 The second cut-out evokes the title of Facile, a collection of Man Ray’s photographs and Éluard’s poems also from 1935. Both references, to Breton’s love poem and an intimate tribute to Man Ray’s former model and Éluard’s spouse Nusch, contextualize the image as an erotic fantasy, which is also insinuated by the voyeuristic tension created by the action of the camera’s recording of the two nude bodies.22 Another layer of possible meaning opens in the final lexical construction of

the cut-outs: il y a, a French expression that reads in English as ‘there is’. In the image, it affirms a paradoxical existence of contradictory terms and achieves its effect as it brings forth an idea that an ocean (or a sea) might be ‘easy’ (or ‘light hearted’). Foregrounding a contradiction, the image applies the Surrealist strategy of deliberately juxtaposing unrelated terms in order to create a site of potential for the appearance of the marvellous, the revelation of ‘surreality’ in reality, whereby the invitation to imagine ‘an easy ocean’ provokes stepping out of the limiting boundaries of language and reason. Michel Foucault describes this interconnectedness between the title and the content in Surrealist images as a ‘non relation’ in his text dedicated to Magritte’s famous drawing and later painting La trahison des images (1929).23 As in Magritte’s case, in which ‘This is not a pipe’ is written underneath a detailed drawing of a pipe, Yamanaka’s image can be viewed to form a calligram, as both visual and textual parts of the collage invite the same contradictory experience.24 In visual terms, this invitation is enacted through the rendition of the hands

holding a mirror as larger than the bodies that it encircles. In addition, an opposition is prominently indicated by the naked male figures, a detail from the famous miniature by brothers Limbourg for Très riches Heures of the Duke of Berry, left incomplete in 1416 after the Duke’s passing and reproduced in the sixth volume of Minotaure in 1935. As Harry Bober explains, the viewer-facing figure of the miniature represents the basic premise of astrological medicine: the correlation between the celestial and human bodies and the domination of the twelve signs of the zodiac over human anatomy: Aries for the head, Taurus the neck and so on.25 Whereas this representation would have been a pictorial standard in medical literature during the Middle Ages – a Hellenistic inheritance to Christian thought – it is the doubling of the figures that renders the particular miniature a famous riddle for later interpreters such as Bober.26 Through to the mid-twentieth century, the time of his writing, they were widely considered to represent a polar opposition between Orient and Occident, or night and day, and this is the most likely reason why Yamanaka is including it in the collage. Furthermore, there is a particular relationship between the textual and the

visual elements of the collage. In case Yamanaka is quoting Breton’s photo-

poem in his use of the word ‘ocean’, the mirror seen in the image is also implied

in the extended use of the French word glace, as it does not only stand for ‘ice’ but for ‘glass’ or ‘mirror’ and also for ‘transparency’. 27 The use of a mirror motif thus reveals the final layer of the possible meaning, or that the paradoxical existence of ‘an easy ocean’ (as probably insinuating an erotic fantasy) is situated on the other side of the mirror, or that the title implicitly refers to the existence of an ‘easy mirror’, a portal that allows transgression between oppositions and different time-spaces through its transparent surface. Even if Yamanaka is not quoting Breton’s photo-poem, a two-way mirror is suggested in the image by the absence of the actual surface of the hand mirror, in positioning of the bodies as facing in opposite directions and in the different colouring of their hair. In terms of Imai’s Traveller, this play between the elements of the image and their possible interpretation can also indicate that the ‘settlement’ between different oppositions – most prominently high and low – is mediated by the transparent quality of the sea (or the ocean) seen in that collage as well. Yamanaka refers to Breton’s writing explicitly in the title of The Unsilvered Mirror

(Shakudei no nai kagami), the other collage that he exhibited at New Plasticity’s exhibitions in 1937. It was included in his ‘POCO A POCO, Introducing the Recent Illustrated Albums’, published in Mizue in June 1937.28 In this text, it was titled as Collage (Korāju) and was reproduced at the end of a text discussing the recent Surrealism-related publications – Julien Levy’s Surrealism, Alfred Barr’s Fantastic Art: Dada, Surrealism and Herbert Read’s Surrealism, all from 1936 – below two collages by Breton and Georges Hugnet (Figure 2.3). The collage was also published in the January 1938 issue of Shashin saron in Yamanaka’s ‘The Subject of Surrealism’, again as The Unsilvered Mirror.29 Neither of the two texts elaborates the image, entitled by a chapter from Breton’s and Soupault’s collection Les Champs magnétiques, which Yamanaka translated together with Nishiwaki for the fourth issue of Ciné in July 1929. 30 In the latter one, however, Yamanaka provides a relevant context as he writes about the development of automatism by Aragon, Breton and Soupault prior to the official establishment of the Surrealist group in 1924. He also discusses the origin of the word ‘Surrealism’, reminding the reader that although the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire is considered to have coined the word in 1917, the idea had its precursor in Gérard de Nerval’s ‘supernaturalism’ (chōshizen), which played a role in ‘devising an experimental category that aimed to achieve the outmost proximity to the state of dreaming’.31 For Yamanaka, the exercise of automatism, first introduced in Les Champs magnétiques, is the ultimate ‘subject’ of Surrealism and is equally practised in poetry and painting as a method that aims to outdo binary oppositions. The Unsilvered Mirror uses two photographs of Charles James’s opera capes

taken by the British photographer Cecil Beaton in 1936, originally published in Vogue. Yamanaka combines them so as to create an illusion of a mirror existing in between the four female figures, a feature that was already implied in their

Figure 2.3 Yamanaka Chirū, Collage, Mizue No. 389, June 1937, page 32, courtesy of

Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art © Yamanaka Keiichi.

original versions. In the collage, the figures are combined to reflect a similar but

not identical formation and thus create an illusion of simultaneous existence of two different images on the opposite sides of the mirror. The significance of the mirror motif is accentuated in the title as it points to the first chapter of Les

Champs magnétiques. This chapter is named in French from a painting by Henri

Matisse, La Glace sans tain (1913), recalling a frequent use of the unsilvered mirror among painters of the day. David Gascoyne translates the title of the chapter as the ‘Unsilvered Glass’ in English, but explains the nuances in the meaning of the word glace from its French original: The word may be rendered literally as ‘foil’ or ‘tin-foil’, an equivalent of which

may be ‘silver-paper’; a dictionary defines it as an amalgam of tin or mercury applied to the back of a piece of glass to make it reflect light. Had I preferred to make a more purely literary transition, I might well have adopted the suggestion that this title should become The Transparent Mirror in English. 32 Yamanaka would register this meaning of the word as a translator of Les Champs

magnétiques in Japanese, and The Unsilvered Mirror suggests precisely the possibility that a transparent surface can be passed through, as suggested by the English writer Lewis Carroll in his Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There (1871), a story celebrated and appropriated by Surrealists ever since the publication of the Manifeste.33 As Haim Finkelstein notes, the close link between a translucent two-way mirror and automatism indicated in Les Champs magnétiques ‘sums up the fundamental dialectics of transparency and opacity involved in the process of automatic writing’.34 As he demonstrates, the two-way mirror quality subsumed by different surfaces is thus regarded as one of the main characteristics of Surrealist painting.35 The specific interest in the trope of two-way mirror as a reference to the

processes of automatism was not specific to New Plasticity but is a point of intersection between this and many other groups and individuals in Japan pursuing an interest in Surrealist collage. How to establish links between them and what these links tell us about Surrealist photography in 1930s Japan becomes the main question in what follows. Before addressing it, we should also note Yamanaka’s reservations about photography. Defining it as an ‘abstract process requiring psychological interpretation and completely relying on chance’, he understands that collage poses a problem to the medium and observes how ‘in order to create an image sprouting from the unconscious, liberated mind, one needs to ignore the camera mechanism’.36 Yamanaka exemplifies this problem with a poetic image of a woman seen with an island for her head and holding a cloud in her mouth while breaking through a door, saying how in order to represent it, photography necessarily requires capturing of all the four different elements – the woman, the island, the cloud and the door – and reassembling them anew. The only two ways, for Yamanaka, by which surreality, or what he terms as ‘the inner reality laying behind the external’, could be brought forward by the means of the camera are photo-collage and photo-object, the former revolutionizing painting and the latter revolutionizing sculpture (as in the works by Hans Bellmer, Dalí, Man Ray and Meret Oppenheim).37 In other words, even

though we can safely establish that New Plasticity started supporting Surrealist

photography in 1930s Japan through an interest in photo-collage among Surrealist painters and critics, it was only certain types of photographs that were understood to be adequate. Therefore, apart from identifying some of the multifold connections between different Surrealist groups and photographers in Japan through a shared interest in photo-collage and the two-way mirror motif, how different practitioners approached the problem identified by Yamanaka, or how photographers responded to the problem of producing a Surrealist image, is also a relevant question to address.

Constellation Yamanaka, who was first introduced to Surrealism in his French classes

at school, approached Éluard with an intention of translating his work into Japanese after Pari Tōkyō.38 However, he also used these translations as an opportunity to exhibit Surrealist visual art on the two occasions in which Imai’s Traveller and his two collages were also seen. On the first of these occasions, Yamanaka lent four of Dalí’s drawings, sent to him in order to accompany his translation of Éluard’s Les Dessous d’une vie ou pyramide humaine (1926), published in Japanese in 1937, to New Plasticity’s second exhibition in January 1936, the first instance in which Dalí’s work was seen in the country.39 In a similar manner, some of the photographic reproductions sent to Yamanaka to accompany the publication titled L’Échange surréaliste in October 1936, primarily a collection of Surrealist texts translated into Japanese, were seen at the fifth exhibition of New Plasticity in March 1937.40 The reproductions were of nine artworks by Arp, Breton, Dalí, Ernst (two pieces), Marie-Berthe Ernst, Man Ray, Štyrsky and Tanguy and were seen alongside the photographic documentation of the Exposition surréaliste: sculptures, objets, peintures, dessigns, the first time that the Surrealist objects were shown in public at the Galerie Pierre Colle in 1933. 41 Given the interest in Breton’s call for the transgression of oppositions among

New Plasticity members, Yamanaka’s ‘Internationalisation of Surrealist Thought’, published in L’Échange surréaliste, is particularly relevant. In this text, he asks how is Surrealism, which refuses to believe in barriers standing in between such oppositions as wakefulness and sleep, reality and dream, objectivity and subjectivity, consciousness and unconsciousness, to resolve the boundaries dividing nations and their languages. 42 He locates the international character of Surrealism in relation to Breton’s ‘Surrealist Situation of the Object’, a lecture given in Prague in 1934, quoting Lautréamont in that ‘poetry must be created by everyone’.43 Breton deduced from this that ‘poetry must be understood by everyone’ and Yamanaka is thus advocating for a more open view of cultural

differences, as most importantly imposed by the language barrier.44 He also

reports how international Surrealist achievements include exhibitions in Barcelona, Belgrade, Brussels, Copenhagen, London, New York, Paris, Prague, Stockholm and Zurich and provides a detailed account of different Surrealist groups in Czechoslovakia, England and France, undoubtedly aiming to lend credibility to similar activities in Japan.45 These activities culminated with Kaigai Chōgenjitsushugi Sakuhin ten

(Exhibition of Foreign Surrealist Works), initially mounted at Tokyo’s Nihon saron on 10–14 June 1937. It showed 377 artworks and documents produced by forty-four Surrealist artists and had Éluard, Hugnet and Roland Penrose on the board of organizers. An informal exhibition catalogue was published ahead of the event, on 20 May, as a special edition of the magazine Mizue, the coorganizer of the show. Co-edited by Takiguchi and Yamanaka, it contains reproductions of 125 works exhibited, an introductory text, biographical details of all the artists, an overview of Surrealism’s developments from 1924 onwards, bibliographical details of related literature published in French from 1930 to the date of exhibition and an index.46 The introductory text acknowledges Surrealism’s outgrowing beyond the borders of Paris and France to become a significant point of reference for artists around the world, especially after the International Surrealist Exhibition, held in London in 1936. 47 Furthermore, the cover page of the informal catalogue, a decalcomania produced by Takiguchi, was featured in the tenth volume of Minotaure in 1937 as a part of an illustrated feature ‘Le surréalisme autour du monde’, confirming the organizers’ view of the exhibition as a prominent achievement in the movement’s internationalization efforts.48 In such a manner, Imai’s Traveller and Yamanaka’s two collages can also

be perceived as sites of the Surrealist exchange and the internationalization of Surrealist thought, through which Surrealism in Japan was to be upheld on equal grounds to the movement’s activities around the world, with New Plasticity playing a significant role in this effort.49 After the international exhibitions in London, New York and Japan, the international character of Surrealist art was also celebrated in Paris with the Exposition internationale du surréalisme, mounted at the Galerie des Beaux-Arts in 1938. Exceptionally, among sixty artists from fourteen countries, the exhibition also included a Japanese artist based in Paris, Okamoto Tarō, with a painting titled Le bras douloureux (1935).50 Furthermore, Imai’s Traveller is included under a French title A la volée in the accompanying publication of the exhibition, Dictionnaire abrégé du surréalisme (1938), together with another three Japanese artists: Ōtsuka Kōji, Shimozato and Suzuki Ayako.51 The publication also accredits both Takiguchi and Yamanaka, the former as a ‘Surrealist poet and writer’ and the latter as a ‘Surrealist poet and writer; promoter of the movement in Japan’.52 According to an article that Yamanaka wrote for Mizue in August 1937, Kaigai

Chōgenjitsushugi Sakuhin ten was seen by several thousands of visitors in each

city that it toured – Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto and Nagoya – and it was accompanied

with conferences at least in Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto. Yamanaka explains how as an event of international exchange the exhibition included a number of English Surrealists but unfortunately no representatives from America.53 The idea of including Japanese artists in the exhibition, he writes, was abandoned for a peculiar difficulty: although there were ‘even more young artists with an interest in Surrealism in Japan than necessary’ there was no single, central group to facilitate the choice.54 Yamanaka’s comment reaffirms Surrealism’s specific position in 1930s Japan: although the exhibition and the later inclusion of Japanese artists in the Exposition internationale and Dictionnaire abrégé ascertain the country’s prominent position in Surrealism’s international orbit, the movement’s activities in the country were dispersed. This situation can be observed even within New Plasticity: although the group was the most established and immediately recognizable Surrealist outpost in the country, it was by no means the only one. For instance, a number of New Plasticity’s members broke off from the group to form the School of Tokyo (Ekōru do Tōkyō) in 1936, and several independent groups set up by students of two main art schools – the Imperial Art School (today’s Musashino Art University in Tokyo) and the Tokyo Fine Arts School (today’s Tokyo University of the Arts) – pursued their interests in Surrealism independently from New Plasticity at the time of its existence.55 However, various members of these seemingly independent and dispersed groups collaborated with each other on different occasions and held memberships in different outlets. New Plasticity is also a pertinent example of this situation as, for instance, Yamanaka simultaneously collaborated with the members of this association from around the country as well as with local groups with an explicit interest in Surrealist photography such as the Nagoya Photo Group (Nagoya Foto Guruppe, 1934). Yamanaka elaborated the significance of collaboration in the final article

framing his interest in photo-collage, published in July 1938, where he situates it in relation to the collective features of the Surrealist exquisite corpse game. 56 Developed on the premises of a children’s game of Heads, Bodies and Legs (the equivalent of French les petit papiers) it was first introduced to the public in the October 1927 issue of La Révolution surréaliste (Nos. 9 and 10) and is known in French as cadaver exquis. Played by several people, the game involves continuing a sequence of words or images based only on the ending of what the previous participant has entered, otherwise concealed by folding of paper before passing it on. It emblematizes Surrealism’s strong belief in the power of collective games as a potential site for invoking the marvellous, informed by Freud’s writing.57 The insistence on collectivity involved in this game is also politically charged, as it aims to disrupt and collapse a seemingly unique character of the modernist work of art. For Yamanaka, the motivation behind the production of the exquisite corpse game translates to photo-collage, which he compares to the

Japanese tengu haikai game, a modification of the original haiku verse produced

by three different authors so as to achieve a nonsensical but arresting content.58 He even names it ‘tengu-photo’ (tengu shashin) in its ability to produce new and autonomous images from elements sourced elsewhere. To him, photo-collage echoes the collaborative character of the exquisite corpse, as the elements it uses are not necessarily produced by a single author. For the occasion, Yamanaka accompanies the article not only with several of

his own images but also with a collage by Yamamoto Kansuke, a Surrealist poet and photographer who first started experimenting with the technique as early as in 1932 in Surrealist circles in Nagoya. Yamamoto’s Collage is constructed from what looks like a crumpled piece of foil placed atop two black-and-white pieces of paper and against two different backgrounds (Figure 2.4). Read against Yamanaka’s earlier ‘The Subject of Surrealism’ and with The Unsilvered Mirror in mind, the foil also implies a two-way mirror, with two opposing poles suggested in the black-and-white colouring of the papers as well as in the two different designs of the surfaces seen in the background. The crumpled piece of foil seen in the centre of the image is folded with the black-and-white papers, whereas the line dividing the two oppositional planes of the implied mirror is not straightforwardly drawn. In other words, a reflecting surface that can be read as a take on what the French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Jacques Lacan has formulated as the ‘mirror stage’, or an anxiety created between the imagined and the represented self, disappears in the fold. The fold suggests a more complex structure and presupposes an abandonment of any stable spatial or temporal reference points demarcating oppositions. It suggests a simultaneous existence and continuous forging of relationships between them, a dialectical tension that was explored by Breton in Les Vases communicants (1932). Translated into the vernacular fields of interest – the language barrier separating Surrealism in Japan from the rest of the world, the differences between Surrealist groups in the country as well as the separation between the art and photography ‘worlds’ – such a structure indicates a complex Surrealist constellation of exchange and collaboration, forming not only between the members of such artistic collectives as New Plasticity but also between different photographers such as Yamamoto. The notion of a constellation, taken up in the work of different Surrealists and theorized as a possible equivalent to the Surrealist means of organization, becomes a relevant point of reference in this sense, especially as it indicates not only the movement’s international character but also its postwar existence. 59 However, we should keep in mind that this constellation also had to negotiate the state of politics in Japan, increasingly worsening with the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, and we can briefly observe this situation in Ei-Kyū’s collage production.

Figure 2.4 Yamamoto Kansuke, Collage, 1938 © Yamamoto Toshio.

Fragmentation It was not just the most important Surrealist publications – magazines and special

volumes – that featured photographs only exceptionally in the first half of the 1930s, but such a situation also prevailed in the major art periodicals. Mizue, the most prominent art magazine at that time, featured a considerably small number of photographs throughout the decade. In the August 1937 issue, however, it included a photo-collage produced by Ei-Kyū, a submission to the first exhibition of a newly formed Free Artists’ Association that took place in the previous month, under the title Real (Rearu) (Figure 2.5). The appearance in the exhibition and in the volume of Mizue marks a significant stepping out of the photographic context

Figure 2.5 Ei-Kyū, Real, 1937, MOMAT/DNPartcom.

for Ei-Kyū in a decisive affiliation with the art world. The exhibition was a rare

occasion to view such an artwork alongside more established forms of artistic practice, as expanding the suitable categories of submission to collage and photogram were specific to this art group even at its inaugural show.60 However, Ei-Kyū did not attend the opening, remaining in his native Miyazaki throughout the year and drawing back from public life in a period of depression and illness.61 This state of mind was already implied in his ‘On Reality’, an article from which the new work takes its title and in which he severely criticizes the art world as enclosed and corrupted, most probably referencing the Matsuda Reorganization (Matsuda kaiso), a process of increased control of arts exhibitions initiated by the minister of education, Matsuda Genji, in 1935. 62 Ei-Kyū’s dissatisfaction with an increasingly heavy burden than the political climate in Japan was imposing on the artistic expression was also expressed in his private correspondence, when

on 7 May 1937 he complained to Yamada that ‘no artwork can exist outside

of a thought that is burdened with reality and the state of affairs in Japan’.63 As in the following year this state of mind drove him to burn and destroy his work and shift the focus towards abstract painting, the full scope of his extensive collage production between 1937 and 1939 never received a focused public presentation, as in the case of Nemuri no riyū. Real shows a fragmented and deformed male torso and includes a

superimposed image of a fishtail substituting the head and reflecting back on the surface of the body in a dolphin-like shadow. It achieves another way for a surpassing of oppositions in its inside-out folding of the interior and the exterior, or the human and the animal, in a process of metamorphosis on the level of the face. The use of dislocated body parts in Ei-Kyū’s collages transcends the application of single motifs, but they attest to a definitive interest in the face and the head as sites of artistic intervention. Apart from Real, the head is also displaced by substitution in several other collages, by another photograph or by a plant. In addition to the explicit reversal of such categories as ‘high’ and ‘low’ or ‘human’ and ‘inhuman’, his use of dislocated body parts might be seen as a release of erotic desire and most of the critics at the time responded to this element of Ei-Kyū’s collages.64 However, sexuality is only mobilized as a tool within a larger transgressive project: using photographs sourced from the mass media, the collages primarily indicate a loss of a singular and recognizable identity.65 This interest brings us back to Yamanaka’s insistence on the intrinsically

collective character of photo-collages. However, the body as the main site of intervention in Ei-Kyū’s collages also demands consideration in the context of the political situation in the country. Namely, the main reference to the body in Japan at that time was a rhetorical homogenization of the nation taking place under the policy of a single ‘national body’ (kokutai). The policy aimed at the unification of all its citizens in a figure of the emperor, an embodiment of the popular slogan ‘one hundred million hearts beating as one’ (ichioku isshin) that was asking for a complete surrendering of the self to the nation in its war efforts following the onset of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937.66 It was made official with the publication of the Fundamentals of Our National Polity (Kokutai no hongi), a pamphlet issued by the Japanese Ministry of Education in the same year, which drew on the ideas of a family state, strengthening in Japan from the turn of the century, in order to provide an ethical grounding for the forthcoming war mobilization.67 As such, it clearly mirrors the notion of ‘the king’s two bodies’ – or body politic – described by Ernst Kantorowicz as a mystical investment of divine power into the mortal body of a nation’s monarch.68 Edward James’s writing about the recently deceased George V in the ninth

volume of Minotaure in 1936 testifies to the interest in this notion in Surrealist circles.69 However, the quintessential Surrealist subversion of the superior position of

the ‘head’ in relation to the body is achieved in a decapitated drawing of Leondardo

da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man (1490), produced by Masson for the cover of Bataille’s magazine Acéphale (1936–1939). The drawing mirrors the title of the magazine, which reads as ‘headless’ from the Greek akephalos or Latin acephalus, in order not only to reverse the ‘high’ (of the head, mind, reason) and the ‘low’ (of the body, instinct, sexuality) but also, specifically, to evoke a ‘headless organisation’ that abandons any hierarchy.70 Ōtani Shōgo’s analysis of Ei-Kyū’s collages points at a similar interest in the symbolical value of the head as a stand-in for reason, especially given his previous interest in transgressing the limits of the reasoning mind expressed in ‘On Reality’.71 As Gilles Deleuze points out, however, there is a great difference between the representation of a face and a head in relation to the body. Whereas the head is an integral part of the body, which can be reduced to it, the face is a ‘structured, spatial organization’ that conceals it.72 A prevailing interest in dismantling the face rather than in decapitating the body in Ei-Kyū’s work, in Deleuze’s terms, reveals an intention to ‘rediscover the head or make it emerge from beneath the face’.73 Such an attempt aims to provide a multiple and unfixed image of the face for the ‘head of the state’, rendered in degrading terms as an animal, an image or a plant. The insistence on reinscribing a potential into a face departs from the symbolical relationship of the head and the body as featured on the cover of Acéphale, but remains close to it. In addition to pointing to an abandonment of any concept of leadership, it signals a decentring of focus and an insistence on collective and multiple identities. In this interest, Ei-Kyū’s work can also be regarded in terms of the general Surrealist preoccupation with metamorphosis, partly embodied in the figure of the bull-headed mythological figure of the Minotaur that inspired the title of the chief Surrealist magazine in the 1930s.74 What this analysis leads to is that although it was de facto a modus operandi

conditioned by the Public Peace Preservation Law, the fragmentation of the Surrealist network in Japan could also be understood as a refusal of a centralized form of collective organization or a response to the increased pressure for the nation’s homogenization. Here, the particular structure and importance of art associations in Japan come to the fore as, according to Alicia Volk, they highlight the essential difference between the European modernist art and its Japanese counterpart.75 As Volk points out, multiplicity was the essential characteristic of the Japanese artistic field in the first half of the twentieth century and its ordering logic was different from Europe in that it lacked an authoritative centre.76 The inherently political and therefore problematic nature of collectivism, or the recognition that modernist art was an integral part of the country’s modernization, was well known in Japanese art circles at least since the 1920s. 77 Decentring and fragmentation, therefore, can be perceived as a response not only to the processes of nation’s homogenization but also to the structuring of major artistic institutions, inseparable from politics in the ways that they were organized as well as through the functions that they performed.

Overlaying, staging, re-photographing Collapsing of spatio-temporal coherence of the work of art (or the photographic

print) by producing images that transcend binary oppositions through different translucent surfaces was shared among varied Surrealist artists in 1930s Japan. Regardless of their differences they should thus be considered in relation to each other, formulating a constellation that is also intrinsic to the operation of a collage, one that abandons any stability and centrality. This constellation was assembled from individual artists belonging to various art collectives and displayed much more coherency than the formal absence of a single Surrealist group would suggest. In addition, it also included photographers, who shared the particular interest in photo-collage and the two-way mirror motif. Hanawa Gingo’s well-known Complex Imagination (Fukuzatsu naru sōzō,

1938) is a prominent example and was seen at the twenty-seventh Namiten in 1938 (Figure 2.6). The image is a composite of three superimposed layers.

Figure 2.6 Hanawa Gingo, Complex Imagination, 1938, Collage and assemblage,

39.2 × 45.2 × 6.5 cm, Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka.

The first shows a semi-nude female model placed against a background of

newspapers and behind white bars, directly looking at the camera. The second shot shows the first photograph framed by a variety of objects, including a boot, a meter and a wire, and is pinned to the background. In the third layer, the second shot is attached to components of a machine, with a bolt in its bottom left and a chain operating a wheel towards the top right. Functioning as a mise en abyme, placing an image within an image, the collage implies that the objectified barred figure of the sitter is controlled or integrated with the machine. The positioning of the body vis-à-vis a machine, together with a type of horror vacui spacing, this evokes a Dadaist montage rather than a Surrealist collage. 78 However, its Surrealist effect and insistence on the ‘complexity’ of imagination required for perceiving it as such are insinuated in Hanawa’s description of the image. A prominent member of Osaka-based photographic circles, Hanawa explains

how Complex Imagination was motivated by his admiration for the work of Surrealist artists living in the area, with whom he wanted to collaborate through experiments with the Surrealist exquisite corpse game.79 It was Tarui Yoshio, a Surrealist painter with an interest in photography, who was in charge of the original shoot, but a photograph of the model with objects assembled around her and against a Japanese wooden doorframe used for construction of the bars was insufficient to produce the desired ‘complex’ effect. Therefore, another Surrealist painter and a member of the Independent Artists’ Association, Toyofuji Isamu, went to a local flea market and randomly selected a box of objects to enrich the original shot. They constructed the additional layers by composing arrangements out of a plastic fly swatter, fishhook and electric meter, with the process continuing into the night. The image is thus primarily based on Hanawa’s collaboration with Surrealist artists in Osaka, as for him the interaction between photography and art is the key to achieving a true Surrealist image.80 The fragmented machinery seen in the final composition, one notably out of order, reads as a comment on the nature of collaboration. Furthermore, the grid-like structure entrapping the model behind bars should

be seen as another transgressive screen. Such a symbolical value of the grid – as indicating first a window and then a mirror – is recognized by Krauss, who interprets the structure of a grid as bivalent. It can perform either a ‘centrifugal’ or ‘centripetal’ movement, suggesting either an extension of the picture surface outwards or an introjection of the outer world into the interior of the work.81 However, in certain cases it deliberately remains ambiguous and implies both directions, as in Mondrian’s painting. Prior to exhibiting Complex Imagination, Hanawa made his knowledge of the ambivalent character of Mondrian’s work apparent in his writing, highlighting it as an example of what he calls a ‘plus-minus style’.82 The indefinite character of grids and the inability to separate one frame from another established for Hanawa the complexity of Mondrian’s painting, which he compares to the Japanese paper doors and windows (shōji), applying the same

method of a ‘grid within a grid’.83 Such use of the grid in Complex Imagination,

directly paying homage to Mondrian, is similar to Yamanaka’s two-way mirror but is less apparent as such in its reliance on photography to construct its several superimposed layers. Some cross-reference between Yamanaka and Hanawa is very likely, as they both compare the exquisite corpse to the Japanese game tengu haikai in 1938.84 Indeed, as Yamanaka warned at the time, to construct this image the group had to produce more than one image. However, their solution of the problem goes beyond the limitations recognized by Yamanaka – the reliance of Surrealist collage on multiple prints – and adds to it the potential of overlaying, or placing of images within images, for the achievement of its ‘complex’ effect. Surrealist photographers interested in both collage and the motif of the two-

way mirror also operated in Tokyo-based Surrealist circles, with Takiguchi as the main representative within New Plasticity. Takiguchi also worked with different Surrealist groups and individuals, and his collaboration with the Surrealist painter and photographer Abe Yoshifumi on Yōsei no kyori (The Fairy’s Distance, 1937) is one such example. Consisting of Takiguchi’s poetry and Abe’s monochrome abstract illustrations seen together on each spread, the album’s cover, showing a mirror within a mirror, symbolizes the intertwining of the two artists’ visions, with Takiguchi’s writing based on his impressions of Abe’s images.85 Like Yamanaka, Takiguchi participated simultaneously in different Surrealist collectives and he first met Abe in 1936, after he joined the Avant-Garde Artists’ Club (Avangyarudo Geijutsuka Kurabu) that Takiguchi helped establish in the same year.86 Within Tokyo-based Surrealist circles Takiguchi also collaborated with Nagata

Isshū, a writer and an artist who previously belonged to various proletarian art groups, and this collaboration involved both photo-collage and the motif of a two-way mirror. The former can be traced back to an article published in the July 1938 issue of Photo Times, where Nagata discusses a collage he made in a correspondence with Takiguchi.87 The image is captioned with a passage from a Nerval’s book known as Aurélia or Dream and Life (1855) (Figure 2.7). Nagata writes in a note addressed to Takiguchi how his intention was not to illustrate Nerval’s text but to investigate how it could be interpreted visually and adds how his interest in Surrealism is strong but that he himself is not a Surrealist.88 Takiguchi responds by saying that he is also a big admirer of this writer, that he appreciates Nagata’s attempt to surpass an illustrative relation between an image and a text, and that he himself feels how he is and isn’t a Surrealist at the same time, given that there is no singular Surrealist group in Japan.89 Considering his previous involvement with by then prosecuted proletarian art

groups, Nagata’s public downplaying of Surrealism’s relevance in his work might not be surprising.90 Nevertheless, it is important to think through Takiguchi’s statement with regard to Breton’s understanding of Nerval’s writing. Famously, Nerval opens Aurélia by saying: ‘Dreams are a second life,’ preceding Surrealist explorations of the site of dreaming as a method offering a possibility to break away from the constraining rules of reason.91 Breton affirms the significance of

Figure 2.7 Nagata Isshū, Nerval, Dream and Life, Photo Times, Vol. 15, July 1938,

page 82–83, courtesy of JCII Camera Museum © Asazuma Shoichi. Nerval’s writing in the Manifeste with regard to the very word ‘Surrealism’, and this

fact is elaborated in Yamanaka’s ‘Subject of Surrealism’.92 In the later ‘Limits Not Frontiers of Surrealism’, a text that Breton published in the wake of the International Surrealist Exhibition in London, he reaffirms the importance of Nerval’s writing as a foundation for a Surrealist mode of perception, writing that it ‘resides in the necessity of passionately interrogating certain situations in life characterised by the fact that they appear to belong at the same time to the real series and to the ideal series of events’.93 In the same text, he explains the ‘objective humour’ as another Surrealist mode of perception to have had its precedent in English writers such as Carroll.94 The main interest of Takiguchi’s response, in such terms, is Nerval’s concern with how the dream-work enables things to exist at the same time on different time-space planes, provoking a mode of perception based on the premise of Carroll’s two-way mirror. We can consider this interest in Nagata’s collage, which is produced from clippings sourced in foreign fashion magazines, a source material easily available to Nagata as he was regularly contributing to Photo Times on the topic of foreign fashion photography throughout 1938. It shows a shot of a mountain with photographs of three female heads placed atop its peaks and with a cut-out of female hands seen in the foreground. The composition suggests a three-headed mountain-body that invokes Nerval’s story Sylvie (1853), in which he describes his imaginary love for three different women, confusing the temporal linearity of the narration.95 The image thus embodies time,

Figure 2.8 Nagata Isshū, Untitled, 1930–1939, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum

© Asazuma Shoichi.

with three different heads suggesting the simultaneous existence of the past, the

present and the future and echoes Takiguchi’s comment how his practice exists within and outside of Surrealism at the same time. 96 Whereas this reading of Nagata’s collage indicates an interest in the temporal

feature of the two-way mirror, Nagata and Takiguchi ascertain their interest in this motif in spatial terms as well, in a photograph showing the two taking a bath (Figure 2.8). In the image, the surface of the water is used so as to construct an illusion in which their reflection in the water is reversed. In the upper part of the

image we see Nagata on the left with a towel on his head, whereas in its lower

part we see another photograph showing Takiguchi wearing the towel. 97 The image uses the motif of a mirror to defamiliarize both photographs and suggests a simultaneous existence of binary oppositions: between high and low or conscious and unconscious states of the mind. On this occasion, it is important to note, Nagata and Takiguchi also subscribe to staging, in a similar way to Hanawa. They verify collaboration as an important mode of work and explore alternative forms of practice that attest to the versatility of Surrealist photography in 1930s Japan. Whereas photography was increasingly accepted in Surrealist circles in Japan

in the later part of the 1930s through the experiments with Surrealist photocollage among different artists, photographers themselves were still not fully integrated with those circles despite their advanced use of the medium. This situation continued even in such Surrealist groups as the Room Nine Society (Kyūshitsukai), which was established in 1939 with the support of Fujita and Tōgō, two prominent Japanese Surrealist painters. Regardless of the group’s extensive production of photo-collages – by such artists as Hashimoto Tetsurō, Katsura Yuki and Yoshihara Jirō – no member of the group identified as a photographer. It was only in the Art and Culture Association (Bijutsu Bunka Kyōkai), the last primarily Surrealist collective to form in the decade in May 1939 on Fukuzawa’s initiative, that photographers such as Nagata were also enlisted as members alongside Surrealist artists and critics.98 The forty founding members came

Figure 2.9 Nagata Isshū, Fire Mountain, 1939, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum

© Asazuma Shoichi.

Figure 2.10 Abe Yoshifumi, A Shot of Mount Yake, Photo Times, Vol. 17, July 1940,

unpaginated, courtesy of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum © Abe Yoshimori.

from almost all the previous Surrealist groups – New Plasticity, Independent Art,

School of Tokyo, various art students’ groups, as well as Room Nine – and the group launched a magazine of the same title, Bijutsu bunka, in August of the same year. The first exhibition of the group included photographic submissions, among them Nagata’s Fire Mountain (Hi no yama) from 1939 (Figure 2.9). The image shows a constellation of heavy rocks seemingly floating in the air, seen

against a mountain in the background. In the July 1940 issue of Photo Times,

Abe accredits his photograph A Shot of Mount Yake (Yakedake no satsuei) as a source of inspiration for Nagata’s Fire Mountain (Figure 2.10).99 Against Abe’s original photograph, Fire Mountain is clearly showing a mirror rendition of the mountain’s reflection in the lake below, with the stones of the lake blown up in larger size and most probably cut out, reassembled and re-photographed together with the other elements of Abe’s original photograph. The visual play between the two images, apart from achieving a true Surrealist status by its inclusion in an exhibition of a Surrealist collective, adds re-photographing to the arsenal of photographic tools for the production of a Surrealist image in 1930s Japan. Within the bridging of vernacular oppositions in Japan explored in this chapter, the image implies that the very possibility of Surrealist organization in the country – taking up the distinct form of a constellation – might also reside on the other side of the mirror.

PART TWO


‘AVNT-GARDE’ PHOTOGRAPHY (zen’ei shashin)


3

IMAGES WITHOUT TEXTS In June 1937 the magazine Atorie dedicated a special issue to the ‘Research and

Criticism of Avant-Garde Painting’. It comprised writings of the most prominent Surrealist artists and critics in Japan, such as Fukuzawa and Takiguchi, as well as a translated catalogue entry from Cubism and Abstract Art, an exhibition curated by Alfred Barr at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1936. Regardless of the formal title and the individual arguments put forward in different texts, Surrealist artworks take up a vast majority of the images published in the opening feature, more than twenty-five pages long and encompassing reproductions of over fifty paintings, sculptures and photographs. Surrealist artists include Arp, Breton, de Chirico, Ernst, Dalí, Alberto Giacometti, Magritte, Miró, Penrose and Okamoto. There are also photographs by Bellmer, Brassaï and Man Ray, seen on a par with Ei-Kyū, Mori Jirō (introduced above the images as a photographer who left New York in 1928 and is based in Paris) and Kitao Jun’ichirō on the Japanese side. Such an opening feature of the magazine makes several important

suggestions. Firstly, it makes clear that the term ‘avant-garde’ connotes Surrealism, ‘Surrealist avant-garde’ reading as its implied and underwritten meaning. This suggestion is strengthened in the following feature, ‘Les Artistes D’Avant-Garde’, which introduces the work of eleven artists across six pages.1 Again, the majority comes from Surrealism – including Arp, Breton, Dalí, Ernst, Miró, Paul Nash and Okamoto – whereas the English painter Ben Nicholson singularly exemplifies abstraction. Secondly, the feature integrates Japanese artists within this ‘Surrealist avant-garde’. And finally, it accredits photography as a significant medium in such a context, allocating it a substantial proportion of its content. Ei-Kyū’s presence is decisive: not only are his photo-drawings featured on the cover of the magazine and placed alongside Man Ray’s photograms within but the inclusion of Kitao follows their joint exhibition held in April of the same year.2 The closing page – showing a well-known rendition of a butterfly by Brassaï together with a close-up photograph of waste partly buried in sand titled Seashore (Kaihin) by Kitao – additionally attests to how a straight shot is considered to be a prominent means of this practice.

SURREALISM AND PHOTOGRAPHY IN 1930s JAPAN The edition of Atorie coincided with Kaigai Chōgenjitsushugi Sakuhin ten,

complementing the simultaneously running exhibition with works produced by Surrealist artists and photographers from Japan, supplementing their exclusion from the show. The disconnect between the visual and textual elements in its layout testifies to the situation in which ‘Surrealism’ as a word was safely applied to an international context, whereas the practice of Japanese Surrealists required the evoking of the ‘avant-garde’. If we recall that in the following month Japan intensified its military campaigning with the onset of the Second Sino-Japanese War, it becomes clear that it was not only impossible to organize in a single group but also no longer possible to even use the word ‘Surrealism’ openly to describe public activity. If we also recall that a number of Surrealist collectives around the country – such as the Avant-Garde Artists’ Club in Tokyo – all adopted ‘avantgarde’ in their titles at around the same time, it also becomes clear that the term was becoming an unmistakable proxy for Surrealism in Japanese at that point in the decade.3 The exclusion of Japanese artists, however, was not the sole peculiarity of

the show. Unlike in other international Surrealist exhibitions, both paintings and Surrealist objects were only seen in photographic reproductions in Japan, with just over 300 photographs taking up over three-quarters of the works exhibited and lining the walls alongside drawings, watercolours, collages and prints.4 This predominantly photographic display – the manner in which Surrealist art from abroad was already shown in the New Plasticity exhibitions in 1936 and 1937 – unsurprisingly generated powerful reverberations in the photography ‘world’. However, this reaction was also circumscribed within the safety zone allocated to Surrealism in the public domain by the euphemistic ‘avant-garde’. Namely, in the aftermath of the exhibition, a number of amateur photo clubs around the country adopted the word in their titles, including the Avant-Garde Image Group (Avangyarudo Zōei Shūdan, Osaka, 1937), the Avant-Garde Photography Association (Zen’ei Shashin Kyōkai, Tokyo, 1938) and the Nagoya Photo AvantGarde (Nagoya Foto Abangarudo, Nagoya, 1939). On the one hand, the use of this word both in its Japanese translation and

as a loanword (in its different versions) registers the embedding of Surrealist photography within a problematic lineage of the artistic avant-garde in 1930s Japan. Establishing in a definitive relation to Surrealist painting with Pari Tōkyō, the term gained a wider recognition in its aftermath but, as the decade progressed, it came to signify both Surrealist and abstract painting, only to largely become synonymous with Surrealism after Kaigai Chōgenjitsushugi Sakuhin ten in 1937. On the other hand, however, zen’ei shashin (avant-garde photography), or what Yamada Satoshi terms as a ‘photo avant-garde’, indicates a consistent response to the 1937 exhibition among photographers in Japan, breaking away from the previous context of ‘new’ photography so as to directly connote Surrealist activity.5 This particular context, established in relation to not only the 1937

IMAGES WITHOUT TEXTS exhibition but also the concomitant issue of Atorie, dominated the discourse in

1937 and 1938 and is the main focus of this section. The main points to consider are the two issues indicated above: the surge of Surrealist photography following Kaigai Chōgenjitsushugi Sakuhin ten as well as the simultaneous purging of public activity from any potential expression of political dissent.

Criticism The amateur photo clubs comprising zen’ei shashin or the Surrealist ‘photo

avant-garde’ acquired some characteristics of Surrealist groups by enlisting among their members the most prominent Surrealist critics, such as Takiguchi and Yamanaka, as well as Surrealist painters with an interest in photography, such as Imai. In this partial reframing of Surrealist discourse in Japan following the 1937 exhibition – which not only integrated photography but also centred on it – these clubs brought theory and practice together in their regular meetings, exhibitions and other collective activities. As a result, and in stark contrast to shinkō shashin, the clubs channelled a vernacular discussion about the nature of Surrealist photography, with practitioners often voicing their own opinions. Takiguchi’s ‘Photography and Surrealism’, published in the February 1938

edition of Photo Times, sets the tone of this discussion, as he claims in the article that Surrealist photography ‘pulls out the beauty hidden in deep folds of the everyday and brings before the eyes snap shots of phenomena flying through the unconscious’.6 Takiguchi contrasts this definition with a common understanding of Surrealist photography as a distortion of reality, situating the problem in terms of what he considers to be a general misconception of the photographic image as a reliable document. For Takiguchi, ‘surreality’ is equally contained within an amateur snapshot, a news image or a scientific photograph.7 The main feature of the critical approach to Surrealist photography in Tokyo is thus his insistence on a straight shot – a photograph that did not undergo any manipulation – as the most adequate means of practice, a view he had been developing with regard to Eugène Atget’s work since 1934.8 The same opinion is reaffirmed in his ‘Interchange between Painting and Photography’, published in the May 1938 issue of the same magazine.9 There, Takiguchi claims how photography’s indexical nature and its alleged objectivity are better means for pursuing a Surrealist dialectic than modelling photography after Surrealist painting.10 By such a claim, Takiguchi is making an attempt to redeem photography as an independent medium, regardless of the fact that Surrealist photographers in Japan had been working under the strong influence of Surrealist painters since the turn of the decade and that some of them had a background in painting. More importantly, however, Takiguchi’s argument in both articles unfolds without any regard for the practices in Japan, which are similarly absent as in the case of the 1937 exhibition.

In contrast to these articles, a number of texts published by several artists

and photographers in the aftermath of the exhibition describe more closely the specific situation in Japan.11 One such elaboration of the connection between Surrealism and photography is Hanawa’s ‘Development of Surrealism in the Photographic Image’, published in Photo Times in April 1938.12 Hanawa establishes the genealogy of Surrealist photography in a broad context, connecting the development of Surrealism to Dada and providing a detailed account of Surrealist activities, including exquisite corpse games, collage and frottage, the Surrealist object and Dalí’s paranoiac-critical method.13 He stresses strange juxtapositions as explorations of chance effects to be the main feature of Surrealist photography and includes his own photographs as examples.14 The Surrealist technique that Hanawa quotes as achieving the major effect in these photographs is displacement (dépaysement), a quintessential Surrealist strategy of deliberate dislocation of objects from their referential context.15 Unlike in painting, where an image is ostensibly constructed, photography has the means of exposing representation more directly by the fact that a camera always bears witness to the real. In other words, displacement is facilitated and effectively made possible by the photographic apparatus. Thus, Surrealist photography involves a paradox, which he explains: ‘Surrealism and photography. This looks as if they are concepts inviting a head-on collision. However, Surrealism invites precisely this type of contradicting conflict.’16 For Hanawa, as for Takiguchi, ‘surreality’ exists in reality, in front of the camera. However, rather than looking for it in the existing everyday scenery, Hanawa constructs a setting for the camera and it is a directed, staged photograph that dominates his practice. In the same text, Hanawa situates the monthly activities of the Avant-Garde

Image Group in a direct lineage to Surrealism’s development in Japan after the 1937 exhibition. Established in Osaka in the same year, the club consisted of twenty members previously belonging to Naniwa and Tanpei, the most prominent outlets for practising photography in the city. Although a practitioner himself, Hanawa took up the role of critically articulating activities of the club, also enlisting other radical photographers of the younger generation such as Hirai Terushichi. He does not shy away from the popularity of Surrealism in Japan at the time, observing that even photographers can often encounter Surrealist images and texts in the magazines catering to them. Moreover, his text includes examples of other Japanese Surrealists working with photography, such as EiKyū, while simultaneously citing Surrealist literature. He notes how Julien Levy’s Surrealism (1936) is among his reference books and recommends Japanese readers to consult the special issue of Mizue (1937) for viewing the works shown in Kaigai Chōgenjitsushugi Sakuhin ten, as well as the special issue of Atorie (1937) as a good source of Surrealist art criticism. He also expresses his strong bewilderment at the fact that there is no genuine interest in Surrealist photography in Tokyo, where this practice is condemned as ‘evil’. 17 In such a

manner, Hanawa authenticates a thorough understanding of Surrealism and its

relation to photography among practitioners in Japan. Additionally, he situates his work in a direct connection to it, accompanying his text with images produced by him and other Japanese artists and in reference to the writings by Japanese photographers and critics. Finally, he theorizes the relation in specific terms originating in Surrealist literature, extending the application of displacement to photography and articulating staged photography as another prominent strand of its achievement. Takiguchi and Hanawa, together with other members of their clubs, were

not the only critical voices theorizing the relationship between Surrealism and photography. Simultaneously, a different approach to this relationship was developing in Nagoya, where the Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde was founded in 1939. The club integrated previous members of the Nagoya Photo Group and the Nagoya Avant-Garde Club and sprang from Surrealist activity revolving around Shimozato and Yamanaka, with participating photographers including Inagaki Taizō, Sakata Minoru, Tajima Tsugio and Yamamoto. Although Yamanaka wrote substantially for different photographic magazines, his main interest remained Surrealist poetry. Also, although Shimozato, primarily a painter, had already started experimenting with photography, he was not to write about its relationship to Surrealism prior to 1938. Rather, it was Sakata who wrote most extensively about Surrealist photography in Nagoya, expanding its context so as to include a specific connection to abstraction and thus diversifying the discursive field in Japan even more.18 Whereas his views will be discussed in detail in the following chapters, it is important to note here that Sakata also maintained a close relationship with the Osaka-based photo clubs, as he lived in the city until 1934 and was a member of Naniwa prior to moving to Nagoya. To a large extent, the language used in these articles was closely tied to

the political situation in the country. After the establishment of an occupied state of Manchukuo in 1932, the culture in Japan went through a period of renaissance, albeit becoming depoliticized and commercialized by the political status quo. The implications of this situation for Surrealist practice were contradictory: regardless of the fact that the 1932 and 1937 exhibitions led to an unprecedented production in Surrealist visual arts, it was under a constant scrutiny that imposed a withdrawal from the public among a large number of artists.19 The critical articulation of Surrealist photography in Japanese indicates several ways through which ‘photo avant-garde’ responded to this situation. In Takiguchi’s case, although an active Surrealist poet himself, he avoids making any direct links to practices in Japan and maintains an art historical approach to the material produced abroad. Hanawa recognizes that such an approach would have been a predominant attitude towards Surrealism in the capital and differentiates the Kansai region as more openly Surrealist. However, although he situates the activities of his club in a clear Surrealist context, he does not

comment on any social or political intentions or implications that they may have.

Finally, Sakata’s alignment of Surrealism with abstraction echoes the concurrent situation in painting, with avant-garde serving as a banner under which Surrealist and abstract practices in the country were often tacitly affiliated and exhibited together so as to acquire authority.20 These disparate voices formulating within ‘avant-garde’ photo clubs did

contribute to a single discussion, at least at the Avant-Garde Photography Symposium (Zen’ei shashin zadankai) that was organized by Photo Times with the help of Koishi and Takiguchi in June 1938. The very term ‘avant-garde’, a conjuncture for a variety of photographic practices developing simultaneously around the country, was the main topic of discussion, with participants of the symposium including representatives of the largest photo clubs in Tokyo and Osaka. Abe, Imai, Nagata and Takiguchi from Tokyo, as well as Hanawa, Koishi, Sakata and Tarui from Osaka, took part in the meeting, together with a number of poets and painters, such as Fukuzawa and Murano Shirō, as well as the editor of the magazine, Tamura Sakae. The magazine published a detailed report in its September issue, and it opens with Takiguchi saying how the main goal of the gathering is to redefine the meaning of the word ‘avant-garde’ against the political implications that it used to have in its earlier use.21 Adding to such a direct de-politicization of the word, Fukuzawa stresses how avant-garde also implies a set of problems inherited in photography from its use in painting, underlining the relation between Surrealism and abstraction as an issue of key importance in Japan.22 After these introductory notes, Hanawa, Sakata and Takiguchi offered their independent views on ‘the problem of Surrealism’ (shūru rearizumu no mondai), in accordance with their previously published articles. 23 Whereas these views render different understandings of avant-garde in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya apparent, the meeting was nevertheless an attempt to affirm disagreement as a positive feature. The participants identified the difficulty of adequately defining the meaning of ‘avant-garde’ as a singular activity against the variety of viewpoints as well as the inability to clearly survey their own position in the specific historical time-space. The event was possibly set up as a learning session, organized in order to

inform the Tokyo-based photographers of more radical approaches to the medium in the Kansai region. The immediate reason for such an interest would have been the media attention that surrounded the annual exhibitions of two major Osakabased clubs – Naniwa and Tanpei – taking place at the same Tokyo venue in June 1938 alongside museum shows in Kyoto and Osaka.24 However, the meeting could have also been an initial session anticipating a larger event. In December 1938, Takiguchi addressed a letter to Penrose, an English artist and poet who took part in the organization of the International Surrealist Exhibition in London as well as Kaigai Chōgenjitsushugi Sakuhin ten, confirming this possibility. Takiguchi informs Penrose of his plans to curate an exhibition dedicated to Surrealist

photography within a bigger and more comprehensive photographic show that

Photo Times was planning to put together in Japan in April 1939.25 He asks Penrose to recommend photographers from his country, which ascertains his intention to organize this exhibition on an international level, but he stresses how those photographers should keep in mind the specific political situation in Japan. ‘Owing to the particular conditions in our country,’ he writes, ‘the photographs solicited should be limited to ones without either political provocation or erotic extremism.’26 He expresses his concern at how his ‘colleagues abroad’ might react to such a request, taking place ‘at this time of conflict’, but assures Penrose of his sincere intentions, promising to be in touch with official documentation soon.27 Although the exhibition never took place, Takiguchi’s letter, evidencing the censorship of both politically provocative and sexually explicit visual material, remains a significant testament to the intellectual climate in Japan at that time and describes in blunt terms the impossibility that Surrealist photographers were faced with in the aftermath of Kaigai Chōgenjitsushugi Sakuhin ten. They were not only unable to call themselves Surrealists, or even use the word ‘avant-garde’ if it were politically motivated, but they were also unable to exhibit images of any provocative or subversive content on any significant scale.

Repetition How did Surrealist photographers in Japan manage to continue working under

such constraints? We can start answering this question by looking at the very report from the symposium, which is accompanied with photographs produced by the members of Naniwa.28 Reproduced over eleven consecutive pages and with each of them taking over two-thirds of a page, they were discussed at the meeting and elucidate a particular approach to Surrealist photography developing in Osaka. Apart from the report itself, various texts and photographs appearing at the same time across different photographic magazines offer further clues for apprehending these images. Hanawa’s ‘New Developments in Photographic Images of Still Life’, published simultaneously with the report in the September 1938 issue of Asahi Camera, provides a valuable source of information and is a good place to start from.29 The very title of this article points at Yasui Nakaji as a central figure behind the

production of Osaka-based clubs: Naniwa, Tanpei and the Avant-Garde Image Group. Although Hanawa defines the word ‘still life’ against the German term stilleben, it is unmistakably a reference to a method that Yasui termed as ‘semistill life’ (han seibutsu) in 1932. Hanawa is well aware of this method, as it was he who first reported about it as a practice of arranging objects for the camera.30 Five years later, at Naniwa’s meeting in June 1937, Yasui explicitly describes it as an operation that ‘harmonises the inharmonious’, bringing together things that are

Figure 3.1 Hanawa Gingo, Light and Dark Flower and Yasui Nakaji, Butterfly, Photo Times, Vol. 15, September 1938, pages 8–9, courtesy of JCII Camera Museum.

seemingly ‘out of joint’ (iwakan) in a process that he also calls ‘montage in situ’

(genchi no montāju).31 Such an explanation articulates the focused experiments with unrelated juxtapositions, practised widely in Surrealist literature and visual arts following Lautréamont, in strictly photographic terms. According to Mitsuda, there can be no doubt that Yasui’s method was informed

by his interest in Surrealism, and especially in the displacement strategy, as the dialectical harmonization of unrelated objects also involves an intuitive forging of relations between otherwise unrelated objects based on automatism. 32 An avid reader of French, Yasui had a great appreciation for Brassaï’s work, as he was familiar with his photography collection Paris de nuit (1933) and exposed to his photographs through subscription to Minotaure from around 1934. A motif that acknowledges this appreciation is that of a butterfly, appearing in one of three photographs that Yasui showed at the Tokyo exhibition and titled Butterfly (1938). An arrangement of objects placed on top of wooden floorboards, it takes its title from a butterfly seen in the image together with a large mineral specimen and two potted models of sea anemone, the shadows of the latter reflecting over the texture of the floorboards. In the report, it is seen together with Hanawa’s Light and Dark Flower (Meian kaika) (Figure 3.1). As a founding member of Tanpei in 1930, Yasui supported the initiative of

younger photographers such as Hanawa and Hirai to establish the Avant-Garde

Image Group. Regardless of their membership in separate clubs, photographers

in Osaka worked closely and exhibited together, and Yasui is known to have encouraged them to experiment with objects so as to structure images with a ‘fantastical effect’.33 Furthermore, Yasui also initiated these experiments by organizing group

shooting sessions. In one such session in 1937, Tanpei photographers rented a primary school and used a number of objects from its science study room, including models of sea anemone, samples of minerals and a cow bone, two of which are seen in Yasui’s Butterfly.34 The image thus combines the artist’s interest in the Surrealist potential of the butterfly motif with a photographic practice that experiments with objects so as to displace them from their original context, a method described by Hanawa in ‘Development of Surrealism’ as of quintessential importance to Surrealist photographers in Osaka. Hanawa adopts a humorous tone to describe the atmosphere during the

shooting session at the primary school in ‘New Developments’, referring to it as ‘school art’ and calling Yasui ‘the chief of strange things’.35 According to the text, the assembled photographers exercised the application of Yasui’s ‘semi-still life’, with its prevailing interest in Surrealism informing the practice of constructing situations specifically for the camera as a method of experimenting with the Surrealist object. Hanawa points out how the technical requirements of the method involve three elements: gathering of desired objects (arrangement), choosing the camera angle and setting up an adequate light. In this, he notes, the approach is not very different from other means of practice, or commercial photography, and so it does not suffice in itself. Rather, he insists that a direct reason behind a ‘golden age’ of still life photography is a ‘new practice’ that openly embraces Surrealism since about a year ago, indicating that Kaigai Chōgenjitsushugi Sakuhin ten was a trigger for the intensified experiments with the Surrealist object in Osaka.36 He establishes how Surrealist practice extends across all artistic mediums, including painting, sculpture and poetry, and he singles out Bellmer and Man Ray as revolutionizing the production of still lives in photography. Finally, he concludes by saying that photographing still lives is only in its initial phase and that there are talks of a joint exhibition among the members of the Avant-Garde Image Group, the Avant-Garde Photography Association and the Nagoya Avant-Garde Club, which should advance the practice further, most probably referring to the exhibition that Takiguchi was planning with Photo Times for 1939.37 ‘Surrealist Situation of the Object’, Breton’s address to an audience gathered for his visit to Prague in 1935, identified the research into objects as a definitive focus of Surrealism during the decade. 38 It reaffirmed Breton’s view expressed in Brussels in the previous year that it is the most pressing issue driving Surrealist activity in the 1930s. In the speech, he reminds the audience how he called for creation of ‘certain objects that one

approaches only in dreams’ as early as in the Introduction au discours sur le

peu de réalité (1924), inviting deliberate construction of individual perception through representation.39 The reproduction of dream-work in reality thus aimed to destabilize the understanding of an artwork as mimetic but also to directly intervene into reality, ‘bringing to life’ a specific vision by the fabrication of objects. Hanawa’s article evidences the existence of a coherent practice related to the Surrealist object research among photographers in Japan as early as in 1932. It also shows how the rising preoccupation with the Surrealist object after the 1937 exhibition was a concern of joint interest to different amateur clubs and how there was an initiative to consolidate their activities and materialize them in an exhibition. Within the main context of Surrealist photography at the time, in such a manner, the practice of Osaka-based clubs brings forth an immediate conclusion: that their explicitly collaborative work focused on experiments with the Surrealist object, the chief subject of Surrealist activity during the 1930s and a shared interest to zen’ei shashin practitioners. Nevertheless, the collective shooting sessions in Osaka engendered

idiosyncratic results. Their main characteristic was that different photographers frequently used the same objects, and we can ascertain this even in Yasui’s Butterfly, as the sea anemone from this photograph can also be seen in Kawasaki Kametarō’s Sacred Torch, featured on the cover of Kamera kurabu in August 1938. The use of identical objects is also a prominent feature of Hirai’s Blue Sky (Aozora), which received the highest praise for its accomplishment by the gathered photographers and critics at the symposium (Figure 3.2).40 The image shows an assembly of objects connected with a wire in the foreground, a man standing with his hands in the air behind them and another figure walking away from the scene in the background. In the accompanying note, Hirai reports how he is often told that the individual elements of his photographs are difficult to comprehend.41 However, the placement of a pole in the bottom right corner discloses the image as originating from the collective photo shoots. Namely, the same object is also seen in its mirror position in Yasui’s Composition: Gyroscope (1938), another arrangement of objects placed beneath a shadow of the crescent moon (Figure 3.3). Furthermore, we can see the same gyroscope, sourced at the primary school, in a photo-collage produced by Hirai in the same year and titled Fantasy of the Moon (Figure 3.4), where all the elements from Yasui’s Gyroscope, including the gyroscope, the pole and the shadow of the crescent moon, are complemented with a cut-out assemblage forming a female figure. Fantasy of the Moon thus suggests that Composition: Gyroscope is showing a romantic encounter, with the gyroscope acting as a substitute for a female body. In turn, such an understanding of Composition: Gyroscope identifies Blue Sky as a repetition of a similar composition, possibly suggesting another romantic scenario.

Figure 3.2 Hirai Terushichi, Blue Sky, Photo Times, Vol. 15, September 1938, page 10, courtesy of JCII Camera Museum © Iwasaki Atsuko.

Figure 3.3 Yasui Nakaji, Composition: Gyroscope, 1938, on deposit at Hyōgo

Prefectural Museum of Art, Kōbe.

Figure 3.4 Hirai Terushichi, Fantasy of the Moon, 1938, Tokyo Photographic Art

Museum © Iwasaki Atsuko.

In order to better understand the strategic experiments with displacement

in staged Surrealist photography we can turn to Nougé’s renowned series Subversion des images (1929–1930), showing a group of sitters interacting with mostly invisible objects. As Silvano Levy demonstrates, Nougé’s experiments with defamiliarization take place in a series of carefully planned steps that involve both suppression and substitution. 42 As the object in question can not only be removed from its contextual setting but can also be replaced by a totally different object, the procedure deliberately obscures the points of reference and the processes of signification for different objects and actions, subverting the logical functioning of an image. In such a manner, there is no means for us to identify all the relations between different objects in Blue Sky or to interpret all of its elements, including the hand gesture, in any singular manner.43 In comparison to Nougé, however, we can notice a clear distinction in the given group of images or that their main focus is the body, which is suppressed and substituted with different, often repetitive objects. Such use of objects as stand-ins for bodies is a well-known Surrealist poetic strategy, mobilized not only by Breton but also by Desnos and Éluard in their writing. 44 Photographers in Osaka translate Surrealist poetic imagination into the realm of photographic representation by fabricating situations that can achieve it in reality. Such activity is assigned another layer of agency by the function of the Surrealist object, assumed not only by the substituted body but also by the image that shows it. Uniquely, such a status of the image among Osaka-based photographers is established intertextually, in reference to each other’s photographs. Blue Sky is indeed difficult to read against the regular signifying systems but assumes its meaning by a deciphering of pictorial clues contained in his extended practice and in reference to the works of other associated photographers, such as Yasui. Blue Sky primarily operates in a reference to the composition of Yasui’s Gyroscope, but it also references Fantasy of the Moon: the blue sky from its title cannot be seen in the black-andwhite reproduction but is a significant element of the collage. Therefore, Yasui’s formulation of the technique as a montage in situ directly

informs or connects to the production of Surrealist collages in Osaka, among such practitioners as Hanawa and Hirai. As a result, these images assume a status independent of language in their mediation of meaning, and this position is enabled but also complicated by the manner through which they are reproduced, as mostly detached from any grounding in text. We can observe this situation in the case of the symposium report and the way in which Yasui’s Butterfly references Kawasaki’s Sacred Torch (and vice versa) or how Hirai’s Blue Sky similarly operates intertextually in reference to Gyroscope and Fantasy of the Moon, but it extends beyond these examples. Following the exhibitions in Kyoto, Osaka and Tokyo, the work of Osaka-based clubs in 1938 appeared in several photographic magazines, including Asahi Camera and Photo Times.45 The media response varied, and criticism ranged from a complete dismissal of

any innovation or excitement to a strong appraisal of the Kansai photographers

for their daring and striking approach to photography.46 Given the popularity of these photographs and the number of magazines that circulated them throughout the year, 1938 is considered as the peak of the photographic radicalism in Osaka. However, these photographs also appear in a mass-media context, where

their meaning is completely divorced from any grounding in text. The most extreme example of this situation is the July 1938 volume of Home Life, a special issue dedicated to Tanpei that features contributions by the club’s members: Hirai, Ōsawa Yoshio, Shiihara Osamu, Kakimoto Kiichi, Kawasaki, Yukawa Yasuhide and Yasui. In the volume, the photographs are placed among gravure sections and articles focusing on popular subject matter, ranging from the ‘Ancient Method of Manufacturing Special Steel for Japanese Swords as Carried out in Izumo Province’ to ‘Up-to-Date Equipment in Maternity Hospitals’. 47 The photographs are seen within the magazine in pairs and in four different sections, across full pages that also include captions (titles and artists’ names). The magazine itself thus becomes another space of exhibition for the photographs, presented as valuable and assigned a distinguished place so as to promote the magazine as ‘modern’, published with a title and a table of contents in English towards the same end. All the photographs are exemplary of the experiments with the Surrealist object undertaken at the time, and Hirai’s Altar (Saidan) is an assemblage of objects that were clearly sourced from the science study room (Figure 3.5). Divorced from both the Surrealist and avant-garde contexts, and appearing without any accompanying text, they are operative exclusively in reference to each other, relying on the viewer to recognize them without the need for explanation. In the case of Altar, this is achieved through the inclusion of the cow bone, which is another object sourced from the elementary school shoot that appeared in several of Yasui’s photographs. The use of the same objects by different photographers at the collective

shooting sessions facilitates the process of authenticating a certain practice, with repetition of pictorial elements providing the means of recognition and credibility. What ultimately counts is the newness of the entire visual regime, based on both originality and regularity of the photographs that constitute it. However, the crucial element in the activation of this regime is participation from the viewer, on which it depends for its actualization. This type of participation aims at a creation of an active subject through the exploration of a shared authorship and the restoration of a social bond through a collective elaboration of meaning, identified at that time by Walter Benjamin in ‘The Author as Producer’ (1934).48 Although by today’s standards this mode of spectatorship could be considered outdated, it primarily relies on raising consciousness through the distance of critical thinking.49 Importantly, such critical thinking on the part of the viewership in Japan during the 1930s could result in prosecution, as the vague wording

Figure 3.5 Hirai Terushichi, Altar, Home Life, July 1938, page 21, courtesy of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum © Iwasaki Atsuko.

of the Public Peace Maintenance Law could presume any form of activity as

potentially suspicious.50 In this regard, Miwako Tezuka writes: Unlike in the case of wartime Germany, vanguard art was judged as being degenerate by the Japanese authority not on the basis of aesthetic standards. It was, rather, singularly condemned due to its suspected link with extraneous political ideals and ideologies, particularly Marxism, which

were increasingly subjected to prosecution for they infused the minds of the

people with free will and critical thinking. 51 From this point of view, even the report from the Avant-Garde Photography

Symposium, as it shows the discussed photographs blown up in size and across more than ten consecutive pages, needs to be reassessed in terms of its main function. Whereas the participating photographers, artists and critics dismiss their political engagement in the discussion, this dismissal allows the photographs to appear in the public domain on a prominent scale, where they would rely on participation from a critically aware viewer to achieve their effect. In such a way, it sheds light on a key feature of the collective Surrealist practice of Osaka-based photographers: that they subscribed to the repetition of same objects and motifs for the sake of rendering their work recognizable, making an active use of the mass media so as to assure a wide reach of its impact. Their compromising of content for the sake of a valuable media access takes places at the time when the viewer was already required to read ‘Surrealism’ between the lines of ‘avant-garde’, as in the case of the June 1937 issue of Atorie.

Representation It thus appears that we have managed to address the question that we started

with or how Surrealist photographers in Osaka bypassed the impossibility of their practice in the oppressive political climate following the onset of the Second SinoJapanese War. However, we are yet to understand the relevance of particular motifs and the ways through which they reached out to their viewers, with the body already crystalizing as of special importance and demanding further attention. The collective shoot at the primary school was followed by another session organized at a mannequin factory in Kyoto soon afterwards, which Hanawa refers to as ‘mannequin art’. 52 The main difference between the two days that Hanawa points out is that the factory also allowed the photographers to capture eroticism as they were exposed to dismembered mannequin parts, and he points at Ueda Bizan’s work as the best example of this difference. One of Ueda’s photographs taken during the day is reproduced in Hikari (Light), an album published in 1940 to celebrate Tanpei’s tenth anniversary, and is titled Delighted (Figure 3.6).53 It shows mannequin parts assembled around a large pipe with a mirror positioned in the place of the head and with a hand seemingly touching two shadows reflected on the wall, suggesting its animate character and ability for communication. The image deploys a well-known Surrealist tactic of using mannequins as

tools of social critique. The application of mannequin parts can be read as a use of the displacement strategy towards a personal expression of sexuality,

Figure 3.6 Ueda Bizan, Delighted, Hikari, 1940, page 111, courtesy of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum © Ueda Kyozan. evoking Freud’s writing about the technique in a number of texts, including The

Interpretation of Dreams (1900) and Jokes and Their Relation to Unconscious (1905). Also, Hanawa’s reference to Bellmer in ‘New Developments’ places Delighted in a relation to his famous series The Doll (1934), in which the artist produced a study of doll’s parts disassembled and reassembled in different variations. Hal Foster’s well-known reading of this series underlines its potency for the liberation of desire, also stressing its close relation to fetishism, as defined by Freud in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905).54 However, the

main Surrealist critics in Japan, Takiguchi and Yamanaka, perceived Bellmer’s

photographs in the aftermath of their inclusion in Kaigai Chōgenjitsushugi Sakuhin ten as a case study in constructed photography. Takiguchi discusses them in such terms at the Avant-Garde Photography Symposium.55 In a similar manner, in ‘The Fantasy of Bellmer’s Dolls’ published in the October 1939 issue of Atorie, Yamanaka divides the process of this artist’s work into four phases: making clear the assembled character of the doll by dislocating its parts, identifying the parts artistically, rearranging them in a new composition and assigning them a new meaning by a photograph.56 He describes the fourth phase as potentially expressing a kind of ‘sadistic love’ but proceeds to read Bellmer’s writing to establish how the primary goal of the photographs is to show a ‘hidden, different’ world.57 As Elza Adamowicz notes, overtly constructed representations of the body

were well known to Surrealists and can be identified in a broader scope of their activity and not only in Bellmer’s famous series. 58 Through the processes of both displacement and reassembly of body parts, she writes, the strategy is applied towards the ‘elaboration of a radically new vision, a mode of creating the surreal by transgressing the limits of existing codes of representation’, as also suggested by Yamanaka.59 Therefore, although the fragmentation of the body explored at the collective shoot at the Kyoto factory points at experimenting with sexual desire, it is grounded in a wider interest into constructed photography and its potential to undo representation. The main figurative trope through which Adamowicz reads the Surrealist bodily constructions is the displacement of classical statues, which takes place in two different phases: by their removal from an established position on the pedestal, as symbols of institutionalized power, and by reconfiguration into new assemblages in different artistic mediums.60 Displacement of a statue is only possible against an established signification in the cultural and social context. In the case of Europe, this takes place through the tradition of classical art and Renaissance painting, a subject of much criticism in the Surrealist strategy of bodily fragmentation. As the displacement of classical statues operates on a subversion of ‘familiar landmarks’, it requires the existence of iconic symbols or literary or pictorial conventions. 61 Classical aesthetics suggested in the images of statues is disrupted primarily for its identification with ‘unity’ and ‘harmony’ and is instead replaced by fragmentation and the re-ascribing of meaning to details. 62 A mannequin was by all means one such iconic symbol and pictorial convention

in 1930s Japan, and it was invested with specific cultural meanings in the Japanese experience of modernity. A ‘mannequin girl’, for instance, was a popular reference to the models employed by large department stores in Tokyo’s Ginza district to pose motionless in their shop windows in order to attract customers.63 Furthermore, the ‘unity’ that the fragmentation of a mannequin would symbolically reference in Japan at the time was the governmental programme promoting a singular national body since 1937, and thus the strategy can be seen as equally

Figure 3.7 Hirai Terushichi, Face, Hikari, 1940, page 52, courtesy of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum © Iwasaki Atsuko.

aimed at its disruption. In terms of classical statues, several images produced by Hirai and Yasui evidence their interest in the specific motif and the importance it bears as a quintessential symbol of aesthetic values not only in Europe but also in Japan, at least since the mid-nineteenth century.64 Hirai experiments with it in several images, one of which is titled Face and appears in Hikari (Figure 3.7). In this case, a broken statue is rendered in close-up and juxtaposed with a small object placed atop of the pupil. The accompanying note to the image reads ‘“Venus’s sorrow”, a far-away myth came softly to my dream,’ suggesting the state of dreaming as the origin of the composition.65 In a lecture given in 1941, Yasui also assigns relevance not only to the broken state of the statue but also to a detail of the image, similar to Adamowicz. He explains that the small black

object seen beneath the eye – rendered as a teardrop – is a small ladle (tamajaku)

and that the image draws out its beauty from the unrelated character of the object to what it is meant to represent, evidencing photography’s ability to communicate critical thinking.66 In such a manner, Yasui goes beyond fragmentation and detailing as methods for breaking down the ‘unity’ of the ‘national body’ in Face and is referring to Lautréamont’s definition of beauty, achieved in stark juxtapositions, as a source of its visual power, ascribing it an active agency in reformulating social and political representation. Empowered by Reverdy’s poetic imagination, such an image was not understood as static and passive but was rather used to provoke new modes of perception. At the lecture, Yasui indicates such agency of Surrealist photography by comparing Face to Le petit mimétique, a work produced by André and Jacqueline Breton and shown in Japan at the 1937 exhibition. As Steven Harris points out, this arrangement of natural objects resembling

a face was one of the key artworks responding to a growing disagreement between Breton and Dalí regarding their individual conceptualizations of the Surrealist object.67 ‘Theory of the Surrealist Object’, articulated in Breton’s 1935 address, was complicated with Dalí’s formulation of the paranoiac-critical method, resulting from several years of thinking about how automatism and the dream narrative could be best rendered visually after his inclusion in the French Surrealist group in 1929.68 Breton initially supported this effort and in 1935 he describes it through the notion of a ‘double image’, formulated by Dalí as a representation of an object that ‘is at the same time the representation of another object that is absolutely different’.69 By this method, Dalí suggests an interventionist possibility of objects, aimed not only at reconstructing the in material form but also at transforming physical reality.70 The tension in the discourse created between Breton’s insistence on grounding the relation between dreams and automatism in poetic images and Dalí’s call for an active production of visual manifestations of the unconscious mind coincided with the change of Surrealism’s relation to the realm of politics. Preoccupation with the Surrealist object was aimed at an art production that would offer an alternative to the politicization of the cultural sphere, viewed by the Surrealists as a mistake and as both theoretically and historically impossible. 71 The tension chiefly surrounded the production of images, as for Breton automatism demands primacy of the poetic image whereas Dalí’s paranoiac-critical method advocates its independent operation in the visual domain, outside of language.72 Although Yasui’s comment made in 1941 implicitly sides with Breton by referring to Le petit mimétique, Dalí’s argument is of great resonance to the practice of Osaka-based photographers who are not simply ridiculing the homogenized ‘body’ of the nation but are also thinking through the functioning of visual representation as such. Yasui’s lecture affirms the interest of photo clubs in Osaka in the constructed nature of representation and the potential of Surrealist photography to disclose and critique it in the public domain.

dreamwork

With such an understanding of Surrealist photography in Osaka – one that

not only came up with authentic modes of collaborative production but also mobilized certain motifs towards the activation of a self-reflexive criticism – we can now return to Hanawa’s Light and Dark Flower (see Figure 3.1), showing a woman standing in a symmetrical composition behind a large pipe with her right hand in the air. Produced in collaboration with Misaki Yōko, possibly also seen in Complex Imagination, the image uses theatricality as a means of not only breaking away from the representation of the body but also using the body as a means of undoing representation.73 Two months before ‘New Developments’, Hanawa published another article in the July issue of Kamera kurabu. It was accompanied with a series of photographs exploring the potential of theatricality in staged photography that reveals Light and Dark Flower to have also originated at the mannequin factory shoot.74 The series shows Misaki, described by Hanawa as a ‘heroine’, interacting with her surroundings. In its opening part, we see her propped against a large stone, with her head placed on top of it and her hands figuring at its front (Figure 3.8). She descends down the hill with her hands in the air and is seen laid upside down on a wall of a ruined stone building, as well as with a pair of shoes substituting her head, again with a distinct hand gesture. There is a sense of movement achieved in the first four images. Such an

impression is disrupted on the following page where the first two photographs

Figure 3.8 Hanawa Gingo, ‘Dream of Spring in Broad Daylight’, Kamera kurabu, July

1938, pages 42–43, courtesy of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum.

Figure 3.9 Hanawa Gingo, ‘Dream of Spring in Broad Daylight’, Kamera kurabu, July

1938, page 44, courtesy of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum.

transport her in a different, industrial setting, where she is posed against a metal construction (Figure 3.9). However, the foregrounding of hands as the main site of displacement as well as the repetition of the closing shot secures the link between the two parts, closing with the artist’s signature. Hanawa uses three different sites in the feature, combining natural, urban and industrial landscapes: Hōraikyō gorge near Takarazuka, Miyakojima ward in Osaka and Shimadzu mannequin factory near Kyoto. It is the second part of the series that reveals

a larger body of work behind Light and Dark Flower, as it shows Misaki in the

same setting of the Kyoto mannequin factory, with the large pipes and her hands displaced against factory bolts also resembling Ueda’s Delighted. The accompanying text is a poetic elaboration of Hanawa’s intent in the series

and uses a number of metaphoric illustrations towards this end. He describes several situations in which a ‘happy strangeness’ can occur in everyday life: when a post box one is certain to have seen on a train station turns out never to have been there or when an encounter with a beautiful passenger on a train obliterates all memory of other people. For him, the ‘brightness’ of present day makes for an easier world to inhabit for ghosts, as they can now be captured in broad daylight whereas in the old Japan they would only go out on damp autumn nights.75 The ‘broad daylight’ in the title thus refers to the ability of photography to capture ‘surreality’ visually, whereas it would have been limited to the spoken or written word in the past. The title takes its cue from William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1590–1596) to refer to the part of the narrative unravelling around the fairy king Oberon and his queen Titania, but Hanawa encourages the readers to create their own fictional or poetic script that would connect the photographs.76 The feature thus affirms his previously stated understanding of ‘surreality’ to be contained in reality and available to the camera for capture. In addition, it also suggests the existence of a ‘perverse vision’, a type of reconfiguring the everyday under the rule of pure intuition that is achieved through Misaki’s embodiment of imagination’s ghostly apparition. Michel Poivert describes the photographic staging of theatrical situations

by such Surrealist artists as Artaud, Nougé and Man Ray as a ‘wax museum constructed by Surrealism to dispose of relics of representation’.77 To Poivert, they form a rupture in descriptive narration, an irreconcilable assemblage of ‘true’ and ‘false’ in the domain of the image. 78 Theatrical photography, differently said, renders representation as grotesque and absurd. For an even wider resonance of this effect, however, Hanawa also relies on intertextual relationships forged in his photographic output throughout the year. In this particular case, these relationships are multiple. Firstly, it is formed vis-à-vis the ‘mannequin art’ or the use of the factory site in Kyoto. Secondly, like the repetitive reliance on the same objects among different members of Osaka-based clubs, it is established through Misaki’s reappearance, as she is also seen in Ikemiya Seijirō’s photograph Shadow (Kage), reproduced in the October 1938 issue of Photo Times (Figure 3.10).79 On this occasion, Hanawa’s Light and Dark Flower is also evoked through dress: Misaki wears a black flower in her hair and under the collar of her shirt in Shadow, whereas she wears a white ribbon in ‘Dream of Spring’. Furthermore, the shadow of a hand seen across her face and from which

Ikemiya’s photograph takes its title evokes the ability for alternative forms of communication also implied in Ueda’s Delighted: between humans and mannequin dolls or ghost and by implication between the artist and the viewer.80 The particular hand gesture seen in Light and Dark Flower is therefore imbued with meaning in relation to both Ikemiya’s Shadow and Ueda’s Delighted and

Figure 3.10 Ikemiya Seijirō, Shadow, Photo Times, Vol. 15, October 1938, unpaginated, courtesy of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum.

is used by Hanawa repetitively, after it first appeared in his ‘Avant-Garde Style

in Photography’ in May 1938, where he used it in several photographs, again produced collaboratively with Misaki.81 In Hanawa’s body of work following the 1937 exhibition, therefore, we can

identify not only a theoretical interest in the Surrealist displacement of objects but coherent experiments with theatricality, with the distinct hand gesture providing

a constant feature. As Matsuda Kazuko’s study showed, the hand motif was

deployed in Surrealism across different artistic mediums, including photography, and its main aspect was that once dislocated from the body a hand would assume the status of an independent object, often evoking the process of automatic writing.82 In Hanawa’s case, however, the hand remains attached to the body and it is the gesture of its suspension in the air as a signal of communication that is its main quality. Different texts in which it appears indicate that what this gesture wishes to communicate is the fantasy of an erotic encounter or a ghostly presence of imagination, or both. In all of them, however, it is accompanied by Hanawa’s distinct style of writing, which suggests that he is subscribing to humour as a deliberate strategy. His evoking of Shakespeare is telling in this sense, as both Takiguchi and Yamanaka use this classic Surrealist reference to elaborate Surrealist humour in Japanese.83 As with Hirai, the main motif through which Hanawa reaches out to the viewer is the body, a critical site of tensions in Japan at the time. Also similar to Hirai, however, it is impossible to read the particular gesture in any singular manner but, as we shall see below, its potential signalling of humorous content to the viewer acquires a specific meaning when it is circulated in the illustrated press.

Printed matter What is essential to the practice of zen’ei shashin is that the main ‘stage’ for

these photographs was printed matter. Photographic magazines such as Photo Times or Camera Art performed an indispensible role in the photography ‘world’ and were used for communication between different photographic clubs in the country.84 Many photographs produced at the time were mainly intended for reproduction in these magazines and without them their existence would have been virtually impossible.85 As we have already established, those magazines were considered specialized and this position allowed them to fall off the radar of censorship at times, ensuring a substantial visibility to a range of Surrealist photographs. However, the same magazines were simultaneously catering to different readers and even the most explicit and the most radical Surrealist content (both textual and visual) could thus be encountered in a diverse and often contradictory context. A stark example of this situation can be observed in the very issue of Photo Times in which Hanawa’s ‘New Developments’ appears. Alongside the magazine’s regular articles on advertising and foreign photography, exemplified by Nagata’s text on Edward Steichen, the issue also features strong military propaganda. In a photograph taken at a concert in Poland, Adolf Hitler is seen greeting female members of the public from the stage, with the caption reading ‘Number One Bachelor of the World: Adolf Hitler’, promoting his persona as popular among the opposite sex.86 In a separate feature seen in the

same issue, titled ‘Introducing Deutschland’, Hitler is posing with a shovel on a

construction site together with a group of children, in promotion of his alleged efforts to build a prosperous future.87 This situation – in which both state propaganda and Surrealist photography

appear in the same magazine – can be understood as what Donald Richie claims to be a characteristic of the Japanese avant-garde or that it is ‘at once incorporated in the taste of the masses, so strong is the lure of the new’.88 The category of ‘newness’ reappears in this context as a seeming echo to the main claim of breaking with traditionalism posed by European avant-gardes.89 However, we should remember that in Japan ‘newness’ was already represented by the concept of the modernist shinkō and that the two were often confused. The integration of Surrealist photography with mass media, rather, points to what Peter Eckersall terms the ‘discursive hybridity’ of the historical avant-garde in Japan, as it involves an intertwining and simultaneous forging of systems that would be considered as divorced in the European context.90 We can observe how this situation unfolds within the specific interest of Osaka-based photographers in the displacement of the body, as it likely commented on such prevailing cultural references as the consumerist drive of a ‘mannequin girl’ or the ideological unity promoted under the notion of the ‘national body’. In addition, however, the body can also be regarded in terms of Japan’s state propaganda in the domain of sports. Following the selection of Tokyo as a host of the Summer Olympics and Sapporo as a host of the Winter Olympics in 1940, announced at the opening ceremony of the Berlin Olympics in 1936, the idealized body was glorified widely as a form of the national ideological discourse, until the preparations were abandoned in July 1938. 91 Such an idealized body came close to the National Socialist notion of the ‘healthy body’, one of the main aims of fragmentation in experiments with the Surrealist objects.92 Given the particularity of distribution of Surrealist photographs in Japan, however, any criticism of this discourse needed to take place in the very same space where it was forged. For instance, we can speculate on the possibility of such criticism by looking

at the magazine issue in which Hanawa’s ‘Avant-Garde Style in Photography’ appears. Namely, the issue also includes a feature introducing Leni Riefenstahl’s Schönheit im Olympischen Kampf (1937), a photobook recording the process of Riefenstahl’s filming of Olympia, a documentary record of the Olympic games in Berlin in 1936. The film was boycotted in the United States as Nazi propaganda and represents the fascist revival of classicism in what Esther Leslie terms to have been the ‘cult of the body’ or the essentially racist imposition of an ‘impossible norm’ based on aesthetic ideals of antique sculpture, as rendered apparent in the opening scene of the film.93 The feature does not separate the body and the image-making process from politics, as it includes three photographs across two pages, showing Hitler saluting German athletes, the athletes saluting back and Riefenstahl editing the film.94 When the Nazi salute seen in the photographs

of Hitler and the German team is contrasted with a distinct hand gesture from Hanawa’s article in the same issue of the magazine, the latter reads as a deliberately humorous subversion of the former.95 Although there is no record to confirm this intention, we need to keep in mind that Surrealist artists in Japan were critical of the political climate and were up to a certain point in the decade often able to be as politically engaged as they wanted as long as they followed the rule to ‘avoid what you must avoid’ or refrained from explicit articulation of political criticism in text.96 Furthermore, such activity was complemented with the readiness of the magazine editors to publish radical content for the sake of profit, termed by Rachael Hutchinson as a ‘paradoxical relationship between radicalism and complicity’.97 Returning to the question of how photographers in Osaka engaged the viewer in their idiosyncratic experiments with the Surrealist object, it becomes clear that displacement offered them the means of attracting attention and that they intensified the viewing experience of this practice through the application of such strategies as theatricality and humour and by ascribing to the motifs of particular resonance in the visual culture of the day, such as the idealized and ideologically loaded representation of the body. There is little doubt that photographic magazines played a central role in their work, despite or precisely because they reproduced varied and sometimes even conflicting material.

4

CODED REVOLUTION In the opening paragraph of ‘The Object as Revealed in Surrealist Experiment’

(1932), Dalí takes his point of departure from the title of Ernst’s painting Pietà, Revolution by Night (1923) ascribing it with significance for the Surrealist experiments with objects, carried out in a distinctly scientific manner. He claims that the word ‘revolution’ sums up the Surrealist future and adds that ‘the review which for several years recorded the experiments should have been called La Révolution surréaliste must be significant’. 1 As Michael Stone-Richards notes, Pietà was precisely an allusion to the complexities of Surrealist revolution as the questions of what is political and what politically effective action might involve became of crucial relevance after the ‘Aragon affair’ in 1929.2 Takiguchi translated the article, originally published in English in This Quarter in September 1932, for the March 1935 issue of Shihō.3 In a short submission to Cahiers d’art written in the same year and titled ‘In Japan’, Takiguchi confirms how such translations of Surrealist texts – including Breton’s La Surréalisme et la peinture, Aragon’s La peinture au défi, as well as Dalí’s essays – offer an opportunity for the young poets and artists in Japan to encounter and study Surrealism, in a country where Romantics are considered ‘feudal lords of the world of literature’.4 However, the encounter with Surrealism in Japan entails great difficulty, as reactionary elements in the country strongly oppose revolutionary literature, censoring the use of the very word ‘revolution’. To Takiguchi, the result is comical to an extent, as the blank spaces appearing in different texts almost always stand for this word.5 Not long afterwards, a defining moment establishing the Surrealist object

experiments as the main focus of the Surrealist research took place with the Exposition surréaliste d’objects (1936). A special issue of the magazine Cahiers d’art accompanied the exhibition, including a reprint of Breton’s address made in Prague in the previous year, titled ‘Surrealist Situation of the Object’.6 Although mostly ignored by the French press, the exhibition had a significant response in Japan. In the same year, Yamanaka introduced both the exhibition and the informal catalogue in ‘The Problem of the Surrealist Object’ published in Shin zōkei in September 1936.7 In the text, he quotes the exhibition and the accompanying issue of Cahiers d’art as examples of the Surrealist experiments with objects, listing several categories in which they can be regarded and charting their genealogy from Marcel Duchamp’s readymade through to definitions of Breton’s

CODED REVOLUTION ‘dream’ objects and Dalí’s ‘symbolically functioning’ objects. For the latter two

he quotes Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution (Volume 3, December 1931) as the source material but the word ‘revolution’ appears in print replaced by two ‘X’ marks. 8 He assigns a great importance to Dalí’s ‘symbolically functioning’ objects, translating a large part of his ‘Surrealist Objects’ (1931), a text where those were first defined, so as to conclude that the Surrealist object is located in the space of coordination between an erotic and a poetic meaning.9 Yamanaka comes back to the same topic in ‘Object Revolution: Position

of the Surrealist Object’, published in Mizue in February 1937, recognizing the earlier text as its prelude.10 In this article, the word ‘revolution’ is used both in the title of the article and in the reference to the source material. The ‘overall revolution of objects’ is, according to Yamanaka, contained in Dalí’s previously cited ‘Surrealist Objects’, which he again translates at great length together with parts of Breton’s and Duchamp’s formerly quoted texts.11 This time, he expands the points which he wishes to make in reference to G. W. F. Hegel and Gaston Bachelard’s concept of ‘surrationalism’, coined in 1936. 12 An additional difference with the previous text is an in-depth analysis of twelve artworks, including Breton’s Dream Object (1935), Dalí’s Aphrodisiac Jacket (1935–1937) and Man Ray’s Mathematical Objects (1934–1936), as well as images produced by Bellmer, Hugnet and Oscar Dominguez and sculptural works made by Giacometti and Oppenheim.13 The problematic word ‘revolution’ finally reappears in Yamanaka’s ‘Two Czech

Painters’, published in the March 1937 issue of Mizue and focusing on works by Štyrský and Toyen.14 There, he establishes Surrealism in Czechoslovakia as geographically, historically and politically close to the movement in France – as evidenced by frequent visits between Breton and Vítêzslav Nezval to Paris and Prague – and reports on Breton’s lecture ‘Political Position of Today’s Art’, delivered during his visit to Prague in 1935. He reproduces a reference to Cecil Day-Lewis from this lecture, in the claim that ‘art for art’s sake’ is as senseless a formula for a poet as ‘revolution for revolution’s sake’ is in the eyes of a true revolutionary, so as to draw attention to the fact that, for Breton, Surrealism cannot be considered ‘political’ in an established sense of the word.15 In this quote, the word ‘revolution’ is again replaced by two ‘X’ marks. In the same text, Yamanaka also explains the specificity of the relationship

between Surrealism and politics in Japan, insisting that avant-garde politics (seijijō no zen’ei) and avant-garde art (geijutsujō no zen’ei) are not necessarily compatible and that Surrealism cannot be art of propaganda or agitation. He adds that there have been individuals who converted towards both the left and the right from the ‘Surrealist camp’ (Shururearisumu no jin’ei) in the last several years and that this is a problem that all Surrealists in Japan should be aware of.16 In other words, Yamanaka calls for Japanese Surrealists to differentiate between Surrealism and politically engaged forms of artistic activity (such as by then suppressed

SURREALISM AND PHOTOGRAPHY IN 1930s JAPAN proletarian art), given Surrealism’s independent position from party politics at that

time. Simultaneously, the constant use and reuse of the word ‘revolution’, and especially its inclusion in the title of the second article in reference to Dalí’s writing, stresses the potential for political action that the Surrealist experiments with objects offer. The very fact that the word appears in Takiguchi’s translation in 1935 only to become problematic in one magazine in 1936 but not in another, and to then become problematic again in the subsequent issue of that same magazine, signals the working of a loose censorship of politically explicit and potentially subversive content.17 However, in light of Takiguchi’s comment, it also reveals how ‘revolution by night’, as described by Dalí, was made impossible in Japanese even in the process of Yamanaka’s writing, in which the very word needed to be coded. As much as Dalí’s investment in the Surrealist experiments with objects

offered a reanimation of the French group’s collective experience, the cultural and social conditions that surrounded it since 1931 had completely changed by the point of the Exposition surréaliste d’objects.18 Namely, Surrealism had not only evolved significantly from its initial phase in the 1920s through to 1930s, but it had also transformed in the five years between 1931 and 1936. The dissolution of Contre-Attaque (1935–1936), a short-lived collaborative effort between Bataille and Breton together with more than fifty other artists and intellectuals forming simultaneously to the rise of the French Popular Front, marks an unsuccessful Surrealist attempt to directly engage with revolutionary politics. In the wake of this failure, Surrealism was considered to be ‘falling back’ to art by compromising with a commercial publisher in the production of Minotaure and forming a ‘strategic alliance’ with Cahiers d’art in 1935 and 1936.19 As Simon Baker points out, a reaffirmation of the Surrealist object strategy followed the inability of Contre-Attaque to find a means of effective political action that would oppose the rise of fascism and reaffirmed Breton’s conviction that representation can play a significant part in forming revolutionary subjects. 20 Whereas Bataille completely disregarded representation, and considered photography dangerous for its intrinsic aestheticism, Breton still saw considerable value in that danger.21 In effect, Breton’s reaffirmation of the object research was a recognition of representation’s relevance as a tool of political engagement. Yamanaka identifies a difficult position that Surrealism occupied following the

failure of Contre-Attaque, and his call to separate Surrealism from any form of political engagement is a recognition that the meaning of the ‘political’ should be reassessed from the point of view of ethics and aesthetics, in not only the refusal but also the inability to exercise any form of protestation in the country. His genealogy of the Surrealist object, however, also mirrors a tension between Breton’s and Dalí’s individual theorizations of the Surrealist object, with Dalí’s 1932 text assigning primacy to images in the evolution of the experiments with objects for their potential to induce a change in the real world.22 This tension registers in Yamanaka’s ‘The Problem of the Surrealist Object’, in the final elaboration of the

Surrealist object as located in the space of coordination between an erotic and

a poetic meaning, designating the first to Dalí. In ‘Object Revolution’, Yamanaka sides in the debate with Dalí, whose definition of ‘symbolically functioning’ objects receives praise for its potential as revolutionary tactics. Finally, he translates the importance of recent Surrealist practice to the ongoing political situation in Japan in ‘Two Czech Painters’, highlighting the urgency to understand such tactics in correct terms. The three articles are interconnected with each other as they follow the same thread of Yamanaka’s thinking about the recent developments in what he terms as the ‘Surrealist camp’. They appear before Kaigai Chōgenjitsushugi Sakuhin ten (1937) and in magazines catering primarily to an art-oriented readership. In such a way, they precede and foresee some of the issues of key importance for the later ‘photo avant-garde’. As these articles are written in the period of stability, prior to the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in July 1937, Yamanaka’s primary aim – to divorce Surrealist art from politics – was meant to articulate the potential for alternative forms of politically meaningful practice to those already suppressed by ‘conversion’ (tenkō) of the leftist writers in the same period. A reading of the Surrealist object strategy close to Yamanaka’s can be observed

in Shimozato’s ‘Two Themes’, another text published in the September 1936 issue of Shin zōkei.23 Shimozato also quotes Cahiers d’art as his source of the ‘object problem’, separating his interest in two subjects: the Surrealist object and paranoia-criticism. He highlights natural and ready-made objects (such as a root of a tree or a hat rack) as especially interesting, due to the fact that they do not require any intervention on the artist’s part. His interest in such objects is exemplified with a photograph of cactus from the Mesemb genus, native to South West Africa, a subject that he introduces in this article for the first time but that will preoccupy him over the following several years, resulting in a change of focus from painting to photography. With regard to the tension between Breton’s and Dalí’s understandings of the Surrealist object, he does not see the need to contrast automatism with paranoia-criticism as he understands them to be aimed at achieving the same goal. His explanation, rather, comes in comparison to Romanticism, which he defines as ‘a subject of observation’ for Surrealism in the following manner: In Romanticism, for example, a dream is portrayed as the author sees it. In

Surrealism, on the other hand, a dream is not portrayed as a dream but is used as a method and a tool, and can be considered to be a key unlocking the mysteries of the unconscious. It is scientific in attitude and intellectual in its approach. Simply said, Romanticism tends to live in the dream whereas Surrealism observes it from the outside. From a Surrealist perspective, Romanticism is a subject of observation.24 This comment demonstrates a Surrealist attitude towards the Japan Romantic

School (Nihon Rōmanha), which came to prominence following the complete

suppression of Communist thought during the 1930s and claimed irrationality

as a premodern characteristic of Japanese thought in order to ground the rising militarist nationalism in aesthetics.25 Much like Takiguchi’s cynical comment made about the Japanese Romantics in his ‘In Japan’, Shimozato differentiates between Romantic and Surrealist approaches to reality and clarifies the particular Surrealist understanding of certain methods – such as the state of dreaming – that might be considered as of shared interest to both. Whereas for the Japanese Romantics aesthetics was a decadent and dematerialized substitute for the inability to go ahead with any political action, Shimozato understands it as a space that opens up a possibility of individual intervention in reality. With regard to Dalí’s paranoiac-critical method, he explains how Surrealism

initially treated dreams by means of automatism and by relying on the unconscious but that, as of recently, it started to also deploy paranoia-criticism. He writes: Needless to say, paranoia is a state of mental derangement and is, therefore,

treated as a pathological condition. But what I would like to point out is that a distorted condition allows us to clearly grasp the true nature of things. For example, we can experiment by giving a strong steel pole a sudden blow or by having it gradually suspended under heavy weight. In other words, a thing reveals its true nature under a distorted condition.26 In this way, the Surrealist object strategy provides Shimozato with a tool to produce

photographic imagery based on his affection for natural objects as a means of intervention in the political domain through the application of paranoia-criticism. Positioning itself firmly against the predominant intellectual school of the day, Shimozato’s text thus also foreshadows a significant discussion regarding the relationship between the Surrealist object and photography, the most significant strand of Surrealist photography in Japan after Kaigai Chōgenjitsushugi Sakuhin ten within zen’ei shashin. This chapter continues to explore the exercise of this practice across Japan, focusing on the work of the photo clubs in Tokyo and Nagoya.

Photographs of objects It was Takiguchi who first articulated the relation between the Surrealist object

and photography in Japanese, in an article published in Photo Times in August 1938.27 Just like Yamanaka, he underlines a specific use of the notion of ‘object’ in a Surrealist context and quotes the Exposition surréaliste d’objects as the best example in which it can be grasped. Takiguchi also provides a wider art historical contextualization of the shift from ‘subjectivity’ (shudeisei) to the ‘thing

itself’ (monojitai) in modernist art following closely Yamanaka’s ‘Revolution of the

Object’. To Takiguchi, the Surrealist exploration of objects is void of subjectivity and is the recognition of how objects have a significance beyond their utilitarian use. He narrates the development of the Surrealist object in visual arts as originating in sculpture, claiming that its chief goal is the transcendence of the everyday use of objects by their displacement in an art context. In this narrative, he downplays the importance of Freudian theory for the articulation of the Surrealist object and insists that Surrealism only recognizes the importance of objects in the experience of everyday life. Thus, Takiguchi disregards any potential for revolutionary politics that the Surrealist object might engender and reclaims it on the level of artistic appropriation, emptied of any relevance outside of a purely aesthetic appreciation. He lists examples for eight categories of objects, providing their names in French while underlying how they would have already been known in Japan, especially in traditional disciplines such as flower arrangement. For instance, he explains that the category of ‘found’ objects (objet trouvé) – such as a tree branch or a stone – is often interesting for its mimetic power, when the given object looks like something else – for instance a face – and stresses how this property of objects was known to the Japanese art of display.28 Finally, the text establishes a link between the Surrealist object and

photography via an example of the English painter and photographer Paul Nash.29 Takiguchi claims that photography has a different materiality from painting and that it possesses an ‘anti-artistic’ quality that allows it to ‘discover’ and ‘deliver’ objects, which are ‘photogenic’ in nature.30 The article thus assigns a great potential to photography in the delivery of the Surrealist object but remains detached from any commentary upon the sociopolitical implications that this practice might have in Japan or elsewhere, based on a premise that the Surrealist object functions outside of subjectivity and translating it into the domain of Japanese traditional art of display. The categories he lists, however, can be seen as partly drawing on already established photographic practices in Osaka and Nagoya, elaborated in Yasui’s ‘semi-still life’ and previous writings by Shimozato and Yamanaka. The particular connection between the Surrealist object and photography with regard to an example by a photographer from abroad thus appears artificial in the situation when similar experiments would have already taken place in Japan on a significant scale and reads as another form of coding of the potentially suspicious material. The popularity of the Surrealist object photography in the country ensued from Kaigai Chōgenjitsushugi Sakuhin ten. As it only showed the actual Surrealist objects via photographs, the ‘photo objects’ (shashin obuje) became the most popular form of Surrealist photography in its aftermath.31 However, since the exhibition took place after the importance of the Surrealist object research was established in images and texts produced by photographers in Osaka and Nagoya, its relevance as a definite reference point for zen’ei shashin is undisputable, but it should be seen as a result of Surrealist

Figure 4.1 Koishi Kiyoshi, ‘Record of a Camera Trip to Kamikōchi’, Photo Times, Vol.

15, October 1938, pages 44–45, courtesy of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum.

efforts in the years prior to its taking place and not as a point of emergence of

Surrealist photography or its relationship to the Surrealist object in 1930s Japan. Regardless of its seemingly aestheticized view of the Surrealist object,

Takiguchi’s ‘Object and Photography’ informed experiments with ‘photo objects’ on a significant scale.32 Most prominently, the article was referenced in a detailed report from an ‘object study’ trip to Mount Yake organized between Abe, Koishi and Nagata, published in the October 1938 issue of Photo Times. The photographers met after the Avant-Garde Photography Symposium and decided to go on the excursion in response to Abe’s and Nagata’s desire to experience the practice of Osaka-based photo clubs, known for their collective shooting sessions that were organized so as to experiment with the Surrealist object strategy.33 They agreed in advance that Abe would write about objects, that Koishi would keep a diary of the journey and that Nagata would photograph tourist visitors to the mountain, and Abe’s and Koishi’s texts are published in the same volume of the magazine. 34 The site, whose name translates as ‘burning mountain’, was chosen as an active volcano whose major eruption in 1915 caused a blockage of a local river, forming Lake Taishō, and scorched the surrounding vegetation. Dead trees still remaining at the mountain are the main subject of photographs produced by both Abe and Koishi and are seen in their respective texts scattered around a desolated, abandoned and catastrophic landscape (Figure 4.1).35

According to Abe, the dead trees were partly considered as examples of

‘perturbed’ objects from Takiguchi’s text, ‘born out of Mount Yake’s trauma and looking like dead bodies, piercing us in an invitation to trance’. 36 In most of the cases, both he and Koishi photographed the dead trees and stone landscape at the mountain in analogy to other things, also following Takiguchi’s description of ‘found’ objects. Abe finds this approach discerning as it reminds him of artists he knows who constantly make remarks about how things around them resemble Dalí’s paintings. To him, this is alarming and disrespects the fact that certain things existed in the way they are before receiving a label of a ‘Dalían landscape’.37 He also asserts how such analogical resemblances appeared humorous to them, as the weather conditions kept limiting what they were able to shoot and as a bond between them grew stronger through conversation. From those observations he concludes that the photographs are finally paradoxical, as the psychological state from which they resulted is different from what they show, expressing his doubt in photography’s ability to render a true representation of an object. Abe’s resolution to this problem is a spark (hibana) that he insists is produced

in the space in between the reality and representation of Mount Yake, as it can help build ‘a new order of consciousness’ on the ashes of ‘the world of popular thinking’.38 In other words, Abe departs from Takiguchi’s de-subjectified view of Surrealist objects – which limits the range of possible readings of photographs by pointing at their ‘popular’ understanding – but equally questions Shimozato’s previously stated opinion about how they only mediate a condition induced in the author upon an encounter with an object. The ‘spark’ that Abe describes is distinctly produced by the photograph itself, which exists beyond such oppositions as reality and representation or the author and the viewer. In such a manner, Abe echoes Dalí’s celebration of a certain automatism or the objectivity of the camera – what Benjamin referred to as ‘optical unconscious’ – which he expressed prior to his development of the paranoiac-critical method.39 In a text published in Photo Times a month before, where one of his images from the excursion also appears, Abe writes that his recent interests include dreams, automatism, objects and the paranoiac-critical method and assigns a great significance to the mechanism of the camera in the practice of photography.40 He also criticizes Nagoya-based photographers for their preference for collage and asks for a refocusing of practice on the everyday life.41 At the end of the volume, Abe makes sure to add a note so as to explain how the use of the word ‘avant-garde’ in his text should not be interpreted as politically but solely artistically charged.42 His later ‘Object Potential of Mount Yake’, therefore, calls for a change in the consciousness of the contemporary viewership via production of a piercing visual material, retaining a distanced position from both Takiguchi’s text and similar practices in Osaka that initiate it, or the former’s aestheticized contextualization of the Surrealist object and the latter’s interest in its potential to undo representation.

automatism' 'Camera's

This difference becomes apparent in a meeting organized among the chief

members of the Nagoya club on 29 December 1938, after and possibly in response to the Avant-Garde Photography Symposium held in Tokyo in the summer of the same year, with notes of the conversation published in the February 1939 issue of Kameraman. The ‘Round Table Meeting Rethinking Avant-Garde Photography’ was organized between three members of the Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde together with two moderators and a person taking notes. In the subsequent report Shimozato is described as a painter, Yamanaka as a poet and Sakata as a photographer, whereas Nagata Niryū and Takada Minayoshi, minor artistic figures in the area, are assigned the roles of ‘editors’.43 It was meant to make zen’ei shashin, an increasingly frequent term in the photographic ‘world’, accessible to the readers who did not completely understand what was at stake.44 Whereas the Tokyo symposium primarily attests to an apolitical understanding of ‘avant-garde’, a close reading of the Nagoya meeting notes below evidences the level of commitment to Surrealism and the focused efforts to engage with its defining characteristics, including Freudian theory and automatism. It also shows the manner in which the field of aesthetics was perceived as relevant through the particular formalist preferences of Nagoya-based photographers. Yamanaka opens the meeting by making his position as a poet and not a visual

artist clear and by underlining his view that the discussion developing around avant-garde photography is specific to Japan for two distinct reasons. Firstly, the word itself originated in French in relation to film whereas it arrived to photography in Japan via painting. Secondly, in Japan it refers to a mixture of Surrealist and abstract tendencies.45 Shimozato agrees with him that such a specific avantgarde is a recent occurence, not spanning more than a few years, whereas it is Sakata who articulates the tension between abstract and Surrealist strands of the joint term. Sakata explains the divide in accordance with his previously published article ‘Photo- Abstraction and Photo-Surrealism’ (in four instalments from December 1937 through March 1938). Unlike in this article, to which we will return in the following chapter, the specific hybridity between abstraction and Surrealism implied in the Japanese interpretation of avant-garde is exemplified with his own photograph.46 Showing what Sakata defines as a ‘radical mixture of an abstract formal surface that communicates a Freudian content’, the photograph has no title in the report but its caption reads: ‘An example in which Freudianism can be seen in abstract form.’47 However, it was simultaneously published in Photo Times (in February 1939) where it is titled as Edible, Animal Mud (Kashokuteki dōbutsuteki na deido) and where its sexual connotation is reaffirmed in an accompanying note that describes the photograph as ‘Freudian’ (furoidoteki) (Figure 4.2).48 It shows a nondescript mass of mud that opens across in resemblance to female genitalia, with the texture and the shape of the material

Figure 4.2 Sakata Minoru, Edible, Animal Mud, Photo Times, Vol. 16, February 1939,

unpaginated, courtesy of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum © Sakata Takashi.

equally suggesting a plant. Shimozato confirms the same preference for a practice

that appears abstract while communicating ‘psychological’ or ‘Freudian’ content at the meeting, underlining that this approach, although seemingly paradoxical, comes to him naturally.49 Clues to understanding the specific wording of Edible, Animal Mud are also offered at the meeting, attesting to an interest in the notion of ‘edible’ beauty as proposed by Dalí in ‘Concerning the Terrifying and Edible Beauty of Art Nouveau Architecture’ (1933).50 The discussion then shifts towards Freudian theory and its treatment within

Surrealist photography. Firstly, Yamanaka establishes Freud’s psychoanalysis as a basis of ‘Surrealist psychology’.51 Sakata adds that the basics of Freudian theory are laid out in A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (1920) and that its main premise is that it is a ‘psychology of desire’.52 As for one of the ‘editors’

such an explanation meant that Surrealism was favouring instincts, he asks for

an elaboration of the Surrealist understanding of beauty, and especially Breton’s ‘convulsive beauty’ and Dalí’s ‘edible beauty’. Shimozato says that they are two ways of addressing the same issue, pointing at Surrealism’s wish to reclaim, or possibly even degrade, the elevated understanding of beauty to a more instinctive level, rooted in everyday, material life. 53 This view evokes his ‘Two Themes’, in which his understanding of Breton’s and Dalí’s views of the Surrealist object was rendered identical. On this occasion, Sakata notes how Yamanaka might disagree, and indeed Yamanaka draws a clear distinction between Breton’s and Dalí’s views of beauty, pointing at different ways in which the two have interpreted automatism. He adds: ‘I find the pathological and unhealthy things that are easy to entrap us in socalled Freudian sensation unpleasant. On the other hand, abstraction also has its limitations.’54 Regardless of a disregard for both, he identifies how abstraction could be considered as a preferred mode of expression to Japanese artists, due to a long tradition of austere interior design in Japanese housing and traditional arts such as the flower arrangement (ikebana), while insisting that a ‘search for a healthier poetic expression’ should be prioritized. 55 Yamanaka thus repeats his previously stated opinion that the exploration of Surrealist objects through a transgressive potential of sexuality grounded in Dalí’s paranoia-criticism might provide a key revolutionary tactic. He nevertheless insists that it needs to sustain its communication with Surrealism’s poetic tradition and thus maintains his reservations about the camera’s ability to successfully address the process of automatic writing. Both Shimozato and Sakata, however, find the specific mixture between

abstraction and what they refer to as the ‘Freudian’ content – photographic renditions of sexual desire – especially potent. To Shimozato, it offers an opportunity of delivering a type of visual material that is rich in associations while remaining formally purist, to which he adds: ‘I wish to smell of Freudian desire to a point of liberation.’56 Shimozato also defines a method that enables the mediation of desire through a straight shot in terms of the ‘camera’s automatism’ (kamera no ōtomachizumu).57 An example he offers of the specific method is Two Dormant Volcanoes (Niko no kyūkazan) (Figure 4.3). The photograph that Shimozato refers to as ‘a purely Surrealist image’ shows the skin of an oak tree from the artist’s garden that features two protuberances resembling a naked female torso.58 The title, however, frames the image as a landscape rather than a close-up. What interests Shimozato is the fusing of a material object with his personal desire and automatism works in photography when it manages to capture this moment.59 Such a definition of photographic automatism resonates with Dalí’s description of the four stages of Surrealist object evolution, contained in ‘The Object as Revealed in Surrealist Experiment’. For Dalí, the object first exists on the outside but can assume the ‘immovable shape of our desire’, as also described by Shimozato.60 However, whereas for Dalí the next two phases involve interaction with the object in achievement of the final fusion, for Shimozato

Figure 4.3 Shimozato Yoshio, Two Dormant Volcanoes, Kameraman, February 1939,

page 28, courtesy of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum © Shimozato Masao.

the act of recording is the means of such interaction, and the fusion is presented

in the final shot. In other words, both Shimozato and Sakata use the straight shot to deliver imprints of their subjective desire onto objects, and also mobilize the transgressive character of sexuality as a means of rendering the process recognizable and potentially affective, while applying Dalí’s concept of ‘edible’ beauty in order to suggest the animate character of the objects photographed.

Returning to the question of zen’ei shashini at the meeting, Yamanaka repeats

his suspicion of the hybrid mixture between Surrealism and abstraction. To him, such mixture is confusing and the separation of Surrealism and abstraction requires a specific ‘state of mind’.61 This concern – that the mixture of different expressions only signals insecurity when trying to convey a purely Surrealist content – is accompanied by his questioning of whether it is only aimed at a stylistic effect, without any true intention to stir the viewership. Instead, he makes a suggestion that it would be more appropriate to ‘find something that would pierce us from an ordinary landscape’. 62 Differently put, Yamanaka understands that a formally abstract image is a required compromise on the part of Japanese photographers who are forced to avoid attention from censors, but doubts the power of explicitly sexual content as an adequate means to communicate the process of producing the Surrealist object photographs. To this comment, Shimozato repeats his understanding of Two Dormant Volcanoes as precisely drawing attention to the beauty and power of surprise in such things that we consider as everyday and tend to disregard. He and Sakata agree that it is precisely in the ordinary and the everyday that the power of Surrealist image should be looked for, as for them an ‘avant-garde’ photograph does not show things for what they really are.63 Sakata points out how such a possibility of viewing an image for more than it

shows requires an abandoning of customary thought.64 The example he gives is that of snow and how it is normally only associated with coldness. However, to Sakata, if we didn’t ‘take off the clothes’ that we were accustomed to wearing (he gives an example of the samurai robe) ‘snow cannot look like female skin’.65 By requiring ‘a change of clothing’ from both the photographer and the viewer, Sakata in effect asks for exactly the type of different consciousness called for by Abe in ‘Object Potential of Mount Yake’ and affirms the key role performed by the visual representation. To the ‘editors’, however, this issue requires that the author instructs the viewer how to look at the image, as to them viewing photographs for more than they actually show was very demanding. However, all the artists agree that the author should not explain their intention and that they only had the caption as a means of making their intention clear, also agreeing that independent interpretations from different viewers are welcome. At that point the conversation came to an end, without reaching any final conclusions.66 Regardless of the formal differences between different clubs, established through

intertextual references to each other’s photographs and opinions, it becomes clear how Surrealist photographers around Japan were working more closely to each other in the context of zen’ei shashin than it would initially appear, agreeing that stirring the viewership was a required goal and disagreeing on how this was best achieved. There are several instances that evidence this close connection at the Nagoya meeting. Sakata comments on the recent exhibitions and issues of photo magazines by saying that they often include images of strange objects, referring to the practice of Osaka-based photographers. He dismisses those as outdated

Figure 4.4 Sakata Minoru, Four and Shimozato Yoshio, A Balloon Giving Birth, Kamera

kurabu, June 1939, unpaginated, courtesy of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum © Sakata Takashi and Shimozato Masao. in terms of Shimozato’s method, especially for their humorous presentation,

describing ‘camera’s automatism’ as better suited to produce an ‘electric spark’ (denkiteki na spāku).67 Such use of the word ‘spark’ acknowledges the excursion to Mount Yake, and given Abe’s comments about Nagoya-based photographers in his text about the excursion, this direct response is unsurprising.68 This discussion develops distinctly within the ‘photo avant-garde’ and articulates an authentic contribution of photographers to the Surrealist discourse in Japan. The meeting thus elucidates not only the close relations between different

clubs encompassing zen’ei shashin but also their investment into finding a means to awaken and reclaim public consciousness as a form of politically effective action that is forced to operate from within the censored visual culture. The motivation of Nagoya-based photographers is articulated in precise terms and follows closely Surrealist terminology by definition of the ‘camera’s automatism’, under Yamanaka’s close scrutiny. However, from within its main means of operation, the photographic magazine, these photographers were also forced to compromise the terms under which their photographs would appear in public. For instance, examples of Shimozato’s and Sakata’s practice of ‘camera’s automatism’ were seen in the June 1939 issue of Kamera kurabu. They both submitted a single photograph to the volume and they are seen together in the magazine’s middle spread, delivering an impressive combination (Figure 4.4). Sakata’s photograph shows four variations of the same image created by the

play of electric light on a diamond glass that possibly alludes to female genitalia

or the anus and is titled Four (Shi). Shimozato provides a photograph of the Mesemb cactus, seen in close-up and isolated from the background so as to appear as groundless and suspended in air, evoking a phallus and titled A Balloon Giving Birth (Kikyū wa taisei suru). In the explanatory notes, both photographs are described as object studies but they are also referred to as the 'Surrealist Freud Photos’ (Chōgenjitsuha no furoido foto), attaching a label to the practice in a matter-of-fact manner. The phrase was probably coined as a means of appropriating foreign words in Japanese so as to connote a more local reading.69 The meaning of the ‘Freudian’ content revealed, or indeed concealed, behind formally abstracted photographs is only hinted at in the notes from the Nagoya meeting, which evidences the same divorcing of image from text as in the case of Osaka-based photographers, discussed in the previous chapter. Whereas the interest in psychoanalysis and Dalí’s work can be identified in

Shimozato’s writing earlier in time, Sakata was known as the most vocal supporter of the mixture between Surrealism and abstraction. The combined interest in both thus seems to arrive from their collaborative search for the best suitable means of practice. However, in the process of its reinscription into Japanese, this practice adopts an innocent and amusing label and thus confirms Yamanaka’s fear that its sensationalist character might not achieve its true effect if seen only as a stylistic feature of the image. ‘A state of mind’ that Yamanaka calls for, required to divorce Surrealism from abstraction, however, was already made impossible earlier in the decade, as evidenced in the coding of the word ‘revolution’ in his texts in 1936 and 1937. Therefore, the relevance of Shimozato’s and Sakata’s efforts to awaken spectatorship through their gripping visual material should be considered under the specific time-space of the decade, in which no direct political reference was tolerated in public and when such a material would only be allowed space in marginal photographic magazines. As Stone-Richards notes, what is of key importance is to understand the exact

meaning of the ‘political’ within Surrealism, as in the French group from 1936 onwards it entailed a gradual shift towards an ethically based form of protest.70 If we recall that the Japanese Romantics were situating the ‘political’ in the domain of aesthetics, Abe’s claim of the photographic independence of the camera mechanism, and a specific content delivery in the practice of the ‘camera’s automatism’ by Shimozato and Sakata, is where its agency should be looked for. Namely, in order to unite Japan in the concept of the ‘national body’, Japanese Romantics subscribed to premodern irrationality to suggest the transcendence of an individual subject in an image of a beatified rural landscape as a site where it could be aesthetically achieved.71 The state, in other words, claimed a cultural essence not only by formulating a unified ‘national body’ but also by grounding it in a specific place.72 Importantly in this sense, those photographers who expressed their interest in the Surrealist object in explicit terms, such as Abe

and Shimozato, focused on the delivery of mountainscapes, and the interest

in constructing an imaginary, alternative space can be assessed vis-à-vis the symbolism of Mount Fuji claimed in the domain of nationalist aesthetics at the same time. The understanding of the mountain as a spiritual peak of the Japanese nation was communicated through numerous photographs across the illustrated press and in different media and would have been difficult not to register in the public imagination of the time.73 Against the social imagination that required identification with the efforts of the war machinery through beautified views of the country based on romantic irrationalism, the claims of Surrealist objectivity and an insistence on reclaiming the everyday and awakening a different consciousness by the spark produced in a (straight) photograph should thus be understood as a focused effort to generate a politically active viewership. Abe and Sakata agree that a ‘spark’ can be produced in the viewer’s encounter with an image depicting either deserted and destroyed alternative landscapes or an abstracted view of a place interrupted and reclaimed by sexual desire. 'Neo-Surrealism'

The Nagoya-based photographers further developed their intricate approach to

Surrealist photography in the immediate aftermath of the Nagoya meeting, during two months of daily collaboration on the Mesemu zoku album between January and March 1939.74 Published as a photobook in 1940, the project channels their authentic practice, as conceived and developed by Shimozato together with Sakata and comprises experiments with natural objects and abstraction. In its delivery, Shimozato mobilized not only the other photographers of their club, Inagaki and Tajima, but also collectors of cacti, Sano Sugeo and Satō Yasuhira, whose photographs are included in the volume. The inclusion of the collectors provides an additional scientific value to the album, and Shimozato made this intention clear in the explanatory notes.75 The book opens from both sides and features separate titles in Japanese and

French on each. In Japanese, the title reads Mesemu zoku: Chōgenjitsushugi shashin shū (Mesemb Genus, Collection of Surrealist Photographs) whereas in French it reads as Mesemb, 20 photographies surréalistes. Shimozato is accredited as the author and the editor on the cover page of the volume’s openings in both languages and photographs following the French reading of the volume (left to right), marked in numbers from one to ten, are all produced by him (Figure 4.5). In reverse, in the Japanese reading of the album, another ten images produced by all collaborators on the project are titled in the Roman alphabet from ‘A’ to ‘J’ (Figure 4.6). Detailed commentary, together with Latin names of all individual cacti, explanatory notes to the volume, a postscript and the publication details are contained in the middle of the volume.76

Figure 4.5 Shimozato Yoshio, from Mesemu zoku: Chōgenjitsushugi shashinshū, 1–10

1940, courtesy of Nagoya City Art Museum © Shimozato Masao.

Figure 4.6 Various artists, edited by Shimozato Yoshio, from Mesemu zoku: Chōgenjitsushugi shashinshū, A-J, 1940, courtesy of Nagoya City Art Museum.

The opening page to the French reading features a round hole that shows a

part of the first photograph, titled in English as The Door. It shows a Mesemb cactus placed on a doorknob so as to suggest an entry point into the volume, described as ‘a passage into a bewitching world’. 77 In the explanation of the subsequent image, a collage in which a photograph of the cactus is shown as if flying above a house, Shimozato insists how the manipulation of the image was necessarily required for a more effective delivery.78 In the following photographs, close-ups and framing play a significant role in the activation of the images, together with the design of the layout and the choice of mostly black backgrounds but in most of the cases the main effect is achieved in mimetic resemblance to genitalia. For example, in the photographs numbered as 4 and 5 we see close-up renditions of the plant foregrounding a sensual texture of its skin. Some of the photographs are repeating previously published shots of the Mesemb, as in the case of 9, in which we can see A Balloon from a different angle. The photographs titled as 2 and 8 have a horizontal layout whereas 3 shows the cacti collection in two different shots, providing a wider view for some of the images included in the volume. The variations in format and character of the photographs move away from a possible narrative that was suggested in the opening of the album. The final image, in which we see a potted cactus placed in front of a number of Shimozato’s portraits with a hole breached between them to indicate the position of the camera, completes the viewing experience. On the reverse side, we see photographs taken by collaborators on the

project, with the first image, this time rendered in black, providing coherence to the opening page. Sakata’s contributions offer similar views of the plant to that of Shimozato’s: B

resembles A Balloon, whereas D looks like human skin.79 Tajima’s close-up views of the plant, F and H, also suggest female and male genitalia and are reproduced horizontally while Satō’s two images, C and I, show vertical renditions of the plant. The remaining three participants are represented by single photographs, with Inagaki’s and Sano’s images rendered horizontally (E and G) and with one of the collector’s shot of his own collection (signed as K.K.), titled J, closing the volume from this side. The album evokes Bataille’s writing about Karl Blossfeldt. His extensive

photographic study of plants, first published in Art Forms in Nature (1928), was exhibited in Karl Nierendorf’s Berlin gallery in 1926 alongside sculptures and objects from Africa and New Guinea, and were later included in Film und Foto. Bataille writes about the photographs in ‘The Language of Flowers’, his contribution to Documents in June 1929, where he notes that ‘desire has nothing to do with ideal beauty’ and that even the most admirable flower would not be represented in terms of its old-fashioned reference to an ‘angelic ideal’, but, on the contrary, as a ‘filthy and glaring sacrilege’. 80 As Dawn Ades notes, the text recognized how flowers and plants are associated with sexual desire not

because of their beauty but because of their ‘grossly sexual hairy organs and

distinguishing earthy roots’.81 This view of beauty was the foundation of Bataille’s base materialism, developed in response to his understanding of the orthodox Surrealism as idealist. However, there were many affinities between Bataille and Dalí and they are also reflected in the text in question, for which Bataille possibly found inspiration in Dalí’s previous ‘The New Limits of Painting’ (1928).82 Dalí’s first Paris exhibition in 1929 served as a pretext for the development of a heated polemic between Breton and Bataille on the questions of aesthetics and the materiality of art, whereas Dalí’s position of ambiguity, achieved in his mobilization of the notion of simulacra and the paranoiac-critical method, placed him between Bataille’s materialism and Breton’s transcendence.83 The debate is reflected upon in the Second manifeste and was known in Japan at least in this form. Several of Shimozato’s comments made at the Nagoya meeting, such as the

view of Surrealist beauty as aiming to ‘degrade’ aesthetics to a more instinctive level and his wish to ‘smell of desire’, can be read as reflections on Bataille’s base materialism. Also, Yamanaka’s dissatisfaction with ‘pathological and unhealthy things’ expressed on the occasion can be read through Bataille’s description of beauty as ‘filthy and glaring sacrilege’. If we assume that Shimozato was aware of this discussion, his siding with Dalí was made clear in ‘Two Themes’ and accompanying diary notes, in which the initial idea for the development of the project is ascribed to his viewing of the 1936 issue of Cahiers d’art.84 If we also assume that Yamanaka was aware of Bataille’s writing, it should be noted that Shimozato’s views of Surrealism were developing in a close relation to Yamanaka’s but from a different premise. Whereas Yamanaka was interested in the contemporary condition of Surrealist political orientation from an established position as a poet and a translator, Shimozato was primarily focusing on Surrealist painting. In ‘Explanation of Non-Figurative Art’, published in Shin zōkei in January 1936, he identifies as the chief sources of his inspiration those members of Abstraction-Création that worked across parallel interests in abstraction and Surrealism.85 In this article, he discusses the group established in Paris in 1931, making a distinction between their members. Whereas the majority was working in ‘pure abstraction’, several members, such as Arp and Seligmann, aimed to ‘convey a deeper psychological content’ in relation to Surrealism.86 He finds this minority more relevant to his own interests and also acknowledges similarities in the use of abstraction by Surrealist painters such as Ernst and Miró, concluding that their work indicates a progression towards ‘Neo-Surrealism’ (nubō shūru).87 In ‘Development of Abstraction, Exchange with Surrealism’, published in the

May 1936 issue of Mizue, Shimozato reaffirms the problem of the interrelations between abstraction and Surrealism as a key issue of concern to the New Plasticity Art Association. 88 He reports how he addressed a letter to Okamoto Tarō, a Japanese painter resident in Paris at the time and a member of the Abstraction-Création, to help him grasp the problem first hand. Okamoto’s reply

confirms that his own interest in Surrealism develops alongside Seligmann’s,

as an increasingly popular trend among the younger painters of the group, but expresses a concern that abstraction and Surrealism remain different in essence and that their work therefore cannot be considered to belong to either of them.89 In view of this letter, Shimozato’s ‘Neo-Surrealism’ was not meant to resolve the specific concerns of Japanese artists only but reflected a broader tension between abstract and Surrealist tendencies taking place among a younger generation of Surrealist artists. As Briony Fer notes, such divisions were not as clearly drawn in the avant-garde circles in Paris of the time and Arp’s involvement in different groups evidences that this network was mostly made from fairly informal alliances and friendships.90 Shimozato and Yamanaka disagree with regard to the way in which erotic

desire and an explicit sexual content are treated within the practice, as Yamanaka expresses his reservations towards the possibility that it is used as a purely stylistic rather than politically motivated tool, regardless of their possible intertwining.91 The question of style is not without interest to Shimozato, who elaborates it in ‘Surrealist Painting and Style’ for Shin zōkei in March 1937.92 There, he claims that Surrealist painting is different from Impressionism or Cubism precisely in its refusal of a single style.93 For Shimozato, ‘Neo-Surrealism’ extends beyond the problem of style and actively seeks a means of a politically meaningful work in Japan under the conditions enforced by state censorship. In this aspiration, he makes use of Dalí’s paranoiaccritical method and if his practice also develops from Bataille’s writing, with regard to Blossfeldt’s photographs or otherwise, this source is not credited. Shimozato’s awareness of Bataille is highly likely, at least in light of his correspondence with Okamoto, as the Japanese painter attended meetings of Contre-Attaque and was later a member of Bataille’s Acéphale society (1936–1939).94 However, Bataille’s interpretation of Blossfeldt’s close-up photographs was largely seen as untrue to the original naturalist purpose of the author and the original, scientific intention of these photographs was highlighted by Takiguchi in the January 1939 issue of Photo Times.95 Therefore, if we take into account the political pressure in 1939, Shimozato’s accreditation of Bataille or recognition of his writing by the best established Surrealist critics might have been as impossible as the use of the word ‘revolution’. Although Shimozato introduced Mesemu zoku to both the publisher of Mizue

and Takiguchi during a trip to Tokyo in March 1939, its publication was postponed until the following year.96 Takiguchi commented on the album following its release in the June 1940 issue of Photo Times, where he highly values its achievement as an example of ‘avant-garde’ photography but calls the portrayed world ‘maniac’ (maniakku to yobareru sekai).97 His critique is delivered in that it ‘does not exist in a violent heat but is too enwrapped in a voyeuristic warmth of a dream’ as he would prefer that the naturalist approach, highlighting the botanical properties of the plant, was developed more coherently.98 Therefore, Takiguchi’s main criticism is directed towards the rigour with which the scientific method

was applied in the production of the album, also reflecting differences between

their respective understandings of the Surrealist object. This criticism resonates with Dalí’s description of the Surrealist objects in ‘The Object as Revealed in Surrealist Experiment’ that Takiguchi translated in 1935. It therefore also reflects on Takiguchi’s personal responsibility for introducing Dalí’s work to Japanese audiences, as a translator of a significant number of his texts and an author of a monograph on the artist published in Japanese in 1939.99 The impact of Dalí’s work in 1930s Japan was much deeper and wider than

the relevance it had for the particular type of photography developed in Nagoya. Whereas his work was seen initially within New Plasticity exhibitions, a significant volume of his texts was translated throughout the decade and his paintings and drawings were reproduced on several occasions, bringing about a full-blown ‘boom’ in his work’s popularity.100 This popularity is noted by Abe as well as by other critics, such as Katō Shinya, who commented that ‘every Tom, Dick and Harry is painting Dalí-like works’ in September 1937.101 In addition, Dalí’s work can be considered to have been of particular interest to photographers, as he wrote about the medium in ‘Photography: Pure Creation of the Spirit’ (1927) and ‘The Photographic Data’ (1929) while adopting the objectivity of the camera lens in the development of his realistic style of painting.102 The role played by Takiguchi was of crucial importance for inducing this popularity and extended to his writing in photography magazines. In November 1939, a month after the submission of Mesemu zoku, Takiguchi articulated his position with regard to Dalí’s popularity by saying: Dalí’s influence spread rapidly among certain young artists like dark rays.

Consequently, it has tended to be interpreted as a contagious infection. As I have been playing the main role in introducing his profile, I seem to have been stigmatized as the carrier of such influence.103 As Ōtani points out, the wide impact of Dalí’s work cannot be seen exclusively

as an adoption of purely formal characteristics on the part of Japanese artists, but similar to Shimozato’s album, as providing them with a tool of a politically effective practice at the time of what he terms a ‘blockade’ of any subversive content.104 That the same ‘blockade’ would drive Takiguchi’s comments is also highly possible, as he wishes to distance himself from a role of Surrealist leadership in the country. Another significant fact highlighted by Ōtani is the generational gap between

the poets and critics who first introduced Surrealism to Japan and the emerging generation of artists in the later half of the decade, mostly in their twenties.105 The majority of the practising Surrealist photographers in the 1930s falls into the latter category and was seeking a means for articulating their practice as politically relevant in an impasse in which they were not able to identify openly as Surrealists

for fear of persecution. An attempt to overcome the absence of a single Surrealist

group in the country, made impossible in a similar manner as a direct voicing of the word ‘revolution’, was articulated in Shimozato’s ‘Neo-Surrealism’. Mesemu zoku was supposed to announce it, assuming that the transgressive character of sexuality would provide the basis for a collective bond with the viewership and thus, ultimately, revolutionize the visual culture of its time. However, the formation of such a united front of Surrealist artists of the younger generation in Japan was also made impossible at the very same time, as the militarist campaigning in 1939 imposed strict control upon all artistic activity even during the process in which the album was being printed. In a postscript to the explanatory notes in Mesemu zoku, dated October 1939, Shimozato explains how the volume was originally conceived in a larger format but that its final size results from a number of difficulties encountered in the process of publishing.106 The political conditions in the country changed even during the editing phase, in a period of around six months, with the new concept of ‘plasticity’ (zōkei) taking over the contextualization of Surrealist photography from the previous ‘avant-garde’. He writes: In the period of the last year or so, myself and a group of artists associated

with me shifted from a sharp angle and have, simply said, come to the point of a more direct expression of plasticity so the works from this collection do not correspond to our present state of mind. We have nevertheless decided not to change the layout of photographs or articles due to an effort we have already invested in putting them together.107 In late 1939, Shimozato was thus forced to plead to the public to excuse the

previous ‘sharp angle’ and still accept the volume due to the efforts already invested in its publication. However, although the latest change of terms and substitution of the words ‘avant-garde’ with ‘plasticity’ allowed its release, it also signalled the failure of ‘Neo-Surrealism’ to actualize in the conditions of intensified political oppression.

PART THREE

'PLASTIC' PHOTOGRAPHY (zōkei shashin)

5

MATERIALITY The intolerance for any activity even remotely considered unpatriotic intensified

significantly after the National Mobilisation Law (Kokka sōdōin hō) was passed in 1938. The government strengthened its control of the cultural field by establishing the Army Art Association (Rikugun Bijutsu Kyōkai) in 1939, through which military officials were given a voice of critical authority in the field of fine arts.1 These new circumstances were unfavourable to the avant-garde: in the same year, the Avant-Garde Photography Association changed its name to the Photo Plasticity Research Association (Shashin Zōkei Kenkyūkai) in March, whereas the Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde became the Nagoya Photography Culture Association (Nagoya Shashin Bunka Kyōkai) in November. In 1940, the Free Artists’ Association also changed its name to the Creative Arts Association (Bijutsu Sōsaku Kyōkai), suggesting that it was not the ‘avant-garde’ only that was deemed unacceptable but any potentially subversive word such as ‘freedom’. Abstract practices of the time were also deemed intolerable and were under a threat of persecution.2 The change of the Tokyo club’s name was announced in the April issue of

Photo Times, in an unsigned report titled ‘Photo Plasticity Research Association: Photo Experiment Group’, with the latter version of the group’s new name written in English. 3 The simultaneous existence of two names – ‘photo plasticity research’ in Japanese and ‘photo experiment’ in English – is explained as an effort to internationalize the activities of the club and to make them clear to foreign audiences. Moholy-Nagy’s definition of ‘photo plasticism’, coined in 1925 in reference to the sculptural sensitivity of photography, is dismissed as inadequate to the particular context in Japan.4 It is rather described as a framework that enables the continuation of zen’ei shashin, while avoiding the ‘danger’ behind the word ‘avant-garde’ and affirming a mixture of Surrealist and abstract tendencies that it contains in the country. 5 The ‘danger’ without doubt refers to revolutionary politics, whereas the particularities of the relationship between Surrealism and abstraction in Japan are not explained. The use of the word zōkei for ‘plasticity’ directly references the New

Plasticity Art Association, the first art collective embracing Surrealist painting that was integrating everyday praxis – indicated in the earlier use of the word

SURREALISM AND PHOTOGRAPHY IN 1930s JAPAN in 1920s Japan – with an interest in those artists such as Arp and Miró who

were considered Surrealist and abstract. With regard to photography, the word additionally evokes its practice as an independent art form in Japanese art circles of the 1930s. This relation is suggested in Takiguchi’s translation of Carola Giedion-Welcker’s Modern Plastic Art (1937), published in two parts in the August and September issues of Mizue.6 Plasticity in painting and sculpture is there related to photography through the increasing popularity of object photography, which Takiguchi identifies as the chief purpose of his translation.7 Therefore, the word resonated among the photographers who were interested in the crossover between the everyday, Surrealism and abstraction, and it connoted photography as an artistic practice that was pursuing a means of delivery of the Surrealist object. Just as with ‘avant-garde’, however, different writers and artists used the word ‘plasticity’ in both its Japanese version and as a loanword (purasutikku), obscuring its exact meaning.8 In addition, the use of an already allusive word significantly varied in 1939 and 1940, as it simultaneously came to stand for different photographic approaches developing in photo clubs around the country, with Tokyo, Nagoya and Fukuoka as the major centres. The fact that ‘plasticity’ was ambiguous enough to connote disparate meanings was reflective of the political climate in 1939, in which the very term ‘avant-garde’ was bound to raise suspicion from the state censors, the same as ‘Surrealism’, ‘revolution’, ‘freedom’ or ‘abstraction’ were. Nagata and Takiguchi elaborated the exact meaning of their club’s new

name in a lecture that was reported on in Photo Times in May 1939, saying that it does not mean the change of interest but offers a better focus to existing practice.9 Takiguchi opens the lecture by situating zen’ei shashin as historically rooted in the impact that cinematic techniques such as close-up and montage had on photography and painting. 10 This time Takiguchi’s definition of Surrealist photography is based on a premise that photography is always an illusion, comprising an immanent element of fantasy. 11 In its pursuit of the imaginary, Surrealist photography is only taking advantage of this existing characteristic of photography, pushing it to its limits. For Freud, fantasy manifests as a fulfilment of a wish, either on the conscious level in the form of a daydream or on the unconscious level where it takes shape of a subliminal, preconscious reverie.12 Accordingly, its achievement in photography often involves the construction of a fictional scenario, and Takiguchi therefore underlines how ‘obviously forged’ or ‘artificial’ photographs are not sufficient for delivery of fantastical content.13 Simply ‘taking pictures of dirty or strange things’, he adds, does not amount to a Surrealist photograph either, insisting that Breton’s poetic method – producing a ‘spark’ through a juxtaposition of unrelated images (such as light and dark or plus and minus) – should be pursued in photography as well. 14 Takiguchi’s criticism of overtly constructed photographs and those depicting ‘dirty or strange things’ can be read against the preferred modes of practice of the clubs in Osaka and

MATERIALITY Nagoya. A straight photograph, he claims, should be more than sufficient to

‘create a Surrealist spectacle in reality’ and convey an impression of déjà vu, or an uncanny feeling of something we have already seen. 15 Abstraction, Takiguchi also claims, is similarly immanent to photography as

fantasy, and this feature of the medium springs from the fact that it is primarily a scientific process, based on chemistry as much as optics. To him, neither fantasy nor abstraction can exist in photography without each other, as much as this might appear paradoxical. This characteristic, he adds, will become even more evident as photographic technology continues to develop and therefore their club aims to treat them equally within the new concept of ‘plasticity’.16 Following Takiguchi’s definition, Nagata takes over the discussion in order to explain its technical manifestations (rayography, solarization, photomontage and collage), reappropriating the entire discourse already established throughout the decade under the rubrics of shinkō shashin and zen’ei shashin. Although Takiguchi’s address makes clear the Surrealist origin of the new

concept in relation to fantasy, it also affirms the specific situation in which Surrealist photography was practised in Japan with regard to abstraction. Previously described by both Takiguchi and Yamanaka as an important method of work for Japanese artists, it was substantially conditioned by increasingly severe censorship. However, in Takiguchi’s view, it also acknowledges the importance of the photographic apparatus, and such a position demonstrates his general interest in modernist photography that did not result from his activities as a Surrealist poet and translator of major Surrealist texts in Japanese. For example, his translation of Barbara Morgan’s ‘Photomontage’ for Photo Times, published in three instalments in the March, April and June issues in 1939, attests to this interest.17 In addition, although the change of the club’s name is justified in terms of the internationalization of its activities, and although such internalization might suggest Takiguchi’s connections with Surrealist circles around the world, this time it is sought in correspondence with Moholy-Nagy. Takiguchi was familiar with the New Bauhaus School of Design, which Moholy-

Nagy set up in Chicago in 1937 and wrote about it in the September 1938 issue of Photo Times, calling Moholy-Nagy an ‘experimental photographer’.18 Furthermore, Takiguchi sent him examples of zōkei shashin gathered from different amateur photo clubs across Japan on at least two occasions in 1939 and 1940.19 Although Takiguchi rejects the suggestion that Moholy-Nagy’s writing is the sole origin of the word ‘plasticity’, he is well aware of the significance that Moholy-Nagy ascribed to photographic technology and materiality and integrates an interest in these topics under the rubric of ‘experimentation’ with an already existing, primarily Surrealist practice in Japan. For Takiguchi, the main limitation of Monoly-Nagy’s ‘photo-plasticism’ is its narrow treatment of painting.20 In other words, although it opens a significant route of practice through the notion of experiment, it does not take into account the influence that

abstract Surrealist painting was exerting on photography in Japan. There is an

abundance of examples that can validate this situation, with the work of Fukuokabased photographer Takahashi Wataru discussed in detail below. However, what we first need to account for is the relevance of abstraction as well as of Dalí’s paranoia-criticism that were embraced by Nagoya-based photographers even before the new term came into use.

Abstraction It was Sakata who first theorized the triple relationship between Surrealism,

photography and abstraction in Japan through the medium’s technological capabilities and from a practitioner’s point of view. ‘Photo Abstraction and Photo Surrealism’, published in Shashin geppō in four parts from December 1937 to March 1938, precedes all of Takiguchi’s writing about Surrealist photography and is one of the first instances in which it was articulated in Japan.21 In the first part of the article, dated September 1937, Sakata situates Surrealism and abstraction as interconnected but different avant-garde practices in a broader European art historical context, defining Surrealism in relation to the Manifeste and Yamanaka’s writing. Their relationships to photography, or what Sakata terms ‘photo-abstraction’ and ‘photo-surrealism’, emerge from New Objectivity: whereas the former is a prominent feature of Moholy-Nagy’s work, with Nakayama’s photograms and Koishi’s Shoka shinkei as relevant examples in Japan, the latter is practised by Bellmer, Dora Maar and Man Ray as well as by such Japanese artists as Ei-Kyū.22 References to Nakayama and Koishi acknowledge Sakata’s involvement

with Naniwa during the time he spent living in Osaka and the term ‘photo abstraction’ is thus situated within the relationship between Surrealism and ‘new’ photography. After moving to Nagoya in 1934, Sakata had opened a Kodak’s photographic supply shop that served as a meeting point between him, Shimozato and Yamanaka – the core members of the Nagoya Photo Group – and his articulation of photography as an artistic practice and in relation to abstraction develops from his association with the two Surrealists from the New Plasticity.23 However, the article also demonstrates the ambition of Sakata’s own project, with its length, overabundance of photographs and the amount of technical terms used to describe them as its chief characteristics. Whereas the second instalment probes the potential of interdisciplinary collaboration for an advanced practice of artistic photography (with projects he developed in relation to Yamanaka’s poetry as well as classical music as examples), the third and the fourth instalments focus on different elements of the photographic process (such as the choice of photographic equipment and different steps in the processing of film). Sakata illustrates all of the instalments with over thirty photographs, mostly

his own but also including the works of Breton, Bellmer, Dominguez, Hannah

Höch, Maar, Man Ray and Tanguy. In ‘A Basic Explanation of “Photo-Surrealism” and “Photo-Abstraction”’,

published in two instalments in the May and June editions of Shashin saron in 1939, he expands on his previous article, reproducing several images from it.24 Appearing in the press at the same time as the report on the Tokyo club’s public address, the text primarily aims to explain, once again, such concepts as ‘photoabstraction’ and ‘photo-surrealism’, with the former dominating his writing this time. He establishes the development of abstract art historically, from the nineteenth century through to the Abstraction-Création group, and posits that materiality and narrative are the major issues of concern.25 He also sees the medium specificity of the photographic apparatus – its use of the camera lens to imbue a photosensitive paper with light – as essential to the photographic treatment of these issues. On one level, the photographic experiments with abstraction render seemingly realist results, which are achieved, for instance, through the choice of the camera angle. Another type of abstraction, which Sakata terms ‘photo plastic’ (foto purasutiku), moves away from the particular materiality of the subject matter and into the very essence of the photographic process, so that the effect becomes non-figurative and is often achieved in the dark room (as in the cases of solarization, rayography or Ei-Kyū’s photo-designs).26 Here, Sakata explains the implication of this type of practice for narrative: abstract photography, like Mondrian’s painting, does not have an indexical relationship to reality and therefore extends beyond individual or national symbolism. 27 In particular, he brings up an example of the Japanese flag (Nisshōki) and the strong emotional investment in its ‘circle of the sun’ (hi no maru) on the part of a Japanese viewer: he insists that in formalist terms it is nothing but a red circle placed within a white rectangle and that as such it also holds universal visual value. 28 In sum, Sakata recognizes different ways through which abstraction was

treated in photography in 1930s Japan, but what is of utmost importance to him is to divorce radical experiments with photographic processes from their potential symbolical readings. If we recall that Shimozato’s ‘camera’s automatism’ deployed abstract renditions of the everyday only to ascribe such images with meaning by the use of particular objects and captions, it appears that Sakata is striving to prove that purely abstract, or completely technological, images are not prone to the same interpretation. When he finally arrives at an elaboration of Surrealism in the final part of the article, he differentiates between Breton’s definition of automatism in the 1920s and Dalí’s application of the paranoiaccritical method to address the recent experiments with the Surrealist object. 29 His understanding of paranoia-criticism – as based on ‘Freudianism’ – and his insistence on how it initiated a ‘new epoch’ in the development of Surrealism foreground the tendency in Nagoya to use abstraction for the representation of sexually implicit content. A group of ‘advanced researchers of Surrealism’ in

Japan, he writes, follows Dalí’s interpretation of Freud’s writing in their efforts

to develop a new vision characteristic of his approach to art. In his overview of Surrealism’s existence in Japan that follows, however, Sakata laments that its relationship to photography is developing ‘late’ (okure) in comparison to such artistic forms as literature and painting. 30 In such a way, he recognizes not only that earlier experiments with abstraction in relation to ‘new’ photography could not have been easily articulated in terms of Surrealism but that as soon as they were identifiable as such they also became more prone to public scrutiny. The attempt to divest photographic abstraction of meaning, or to divorce the abstract form from its Surrealist content, on the other hand, is a significant point to note as a specific strand of Sakata’s own practice, developing independently from but also in parallel to Shimozato’s ‘camera’s automatism’. We will come back to how Sakata’s position manifests in practice later on.

Prior to that, it is important to identify the main point of disagreement between the two definitions of plasticity described above. Read alongside each other, Takiguchi’s speech and Sakata’s article agree on the basic premise that avantgarde connotes a specific situation with regard to photography in 1930s Japan in its combined interests in Surrealism and abstraction. However, in their understanding of both tendencies they show significant divergences and especially disagree when it comes to the importance of Dalí’s paranoiac-critical method for the Nagoya-based photographers. Takiguchi claims abstraction on the level of photography’s technological nature, and his prediction that such an understanding of photography is destined to become more prominent in time is interesting to note.31 Sakata takes up a different position. He recognizes the type of abstraction that Takiguchi describes as an elementary method of experimentation and identifies a more radical approach, through which any reference to the real is severed in the processes of engaging with the essence of photographic materiality. 32 All of Sakata’s photographs accompanying the article are examples of the latter, including a version of Four, and indicate that whereas for Takiguchi plasticity offers a means to expand on existing practice in the direction of artistic experimentation, for Sakata it enables the furthering of his existing experiments, using both abstraction and Dalí’s paranoia-criticism. Dalí’s particular ‘influence’, from which Takiguchi wanted to distance himself, seems to be the main point of difference. Sakata continuously diverges from the preferred practice of Surrealist photography as defined by Takiguchi and his repeated insistence on the straight shot as the most appropriate means of delivery of a type of poetic image considered fundamental to the definition of Surrealism. Regardless of the fact that some of the best-known Surrealist photographers in Japan (including Abe from Takiguchi’s immediate circle) expressed their knowledge of and interest in Dalí’s paranoiac-critical method, Takiguchi continuously insists that Surrealist photography should remain grounded in language. The claim that poetry rather than painting is

the best-suited ally to photography in the delivery of Surrealist content was

already established in his two key texts in the previous year and continues to inform his writing. Whereas he is ready to accredit painting as relevant to plasticity, he seems to be very reluctant to do so for the interchange between the two mediums in Surrealism.

Paranoia-criticism In a similar way to revolutionary literature or avant-garde art, psychoanalysis was

also understood to be a ‘danger’ in 1930s Japan.33 Regardless of this, at least two texts in Japanese, published on the occasion of Freud’s death in 1939, commented on the relevance of Freudian theory for modern art and particularly Surrealism. In the first text, Ōtsuki Kenji explains how Freud’s writing is relevant to Surrealism, adding that there are interesting examples of Surrealist art in Japan.34 He offers a psychoanalytic reading of a personal dream saying that it could symbolize a ‘dream of the people’ or a ‘dream of the nation’.35 In the second text, Takiguchi also describes how Freud’s theory is incorporated within Surrealism.36 Although he clearly asserts how different Surrealist artists such as Ernst and Dalí make use of psychoanalysis to formulate their politically engaged practices, no comment is made on how such a use registers in Japan. Therefore, whereas Ōtsuki’s dream example makes a clear link between the portrayals of individual dreams and sociopolitical critique and implies that this methodology is not unknown in Japan, Takiguchi’s extensive article primarily clarifies Breton’s relationship to psychoanalysis, in both Manifestoes as well as in his 1935 address to the Prague group, and thus aims to clarify the position of so-called orthodox Surrealism. As in a number of his previous texts, Takiguchi maintains an art historical approach, but the breadth of his argument speaks well of the level on which psychoanalysis was known and discussed in Japanese art circles during the decade. In 1938, Takiguchi himself attempted a psychoanalytic reading of Dalí’s work

in a text published in Mizue.37 Takiguchi calls Dalí ‘a contemporary painter of fantasy’ in the opening sentence and goes on to read his understanding of paranoia through Jacques Lacan’s writing on the subject.38 As is well known, Dalí’s ‘Paranoiac-Critical Interpretations of the Obsessive Image of Millet’s L’Angelus’ appeared in the first issue of Minotaure in 1933 immediately before Lacan’s ‘The Problem of Style and the Psychiatric Conception of the Paranoiac Forms of Experience’, an article that he published after completing his doctoral thesis on the same subject the previous year.39 Dalí is aware of Lacan’s thesis and even accredits it in his article, and although his reading of paranoia develops independently it is, as Takiguchi notes, close to Lacan’s own interest. Takiguchi accompanies his text with two photographs of Dalí taken by Man Ray that were originally seen in Dalí’s ‘The New Colours of Spectral Sex-Appeal’, published in

the fifth issue of Minotaure in 1934, so it appears that on this occasion Takiguchi

uses a range of Dalí’s texts from the magazine.40 In his monograph, published in January 1939, Takiguchi situates Dalí’s work

in relation to photography, claiming that it is the best example of ‘photogenic’ art of the twentieth century.41 In such a manner, although Takiguchi affirms a strong relationship between the two, he only acknowledges its relevance for creating a type of fantasy that remains embedded in Freud’s theory and refrains from making any links between psychoanalysis and photography, regardless of his clear interest in both. Takiguchi grounds Dalí’s work in a close reading of Freud but makes sure to distinguish paranoia-criticism as primarily an artistic tool developed by the artist in relation to his own work.42 He goes as far as to mention two examples of psychoanalytic analysis of Dalí’s paintings – Bataille’s take on Lugubrious Game (1929) and Levy’s criticism of Accommodations of Desire (1929) – while contrasting them with Dalí’s own statements that dismiss psychoanalysis as a method for understanding his work and stressing that such an approach is of no interest to him personally.43 The reading of Freud on the part of art historians and critics was not the

sole route for the dissemination of psychoanalytic knowledge among Japanese artists, who referenced the link between Freudian theory and Surrealism independently and throughout the decade.44 In the case of the Kansai-based photographers, their analysis and discussion of paranoia-criticism precede all of Takiguchi’s major texts on both Dalí and psychoanalysis. Yamanaka translated ‘Rotting Donkey’ (1930), one of the first texts in which Dalí defined the method, in December 1937.45 Yamanaka also introduced the idea that this method opens an image up to multiple interpretations in a text published in Nagoya shinbun in 1936.46 There, he establishes how the working of the method could be seen in both Dalí’s films and paintings and is explained in his recent article ‘The Tragic Myth of Millet’s L’Angelus’.47 He explains Dalí’s research into paranoia as a model for developing a specific vision that allows a re-reading of objects and images away from their conventionally accepted signification.48 As Roger Rothman’s analysis of ‘Rotten Donkey’ shows, it not only reflects

Dalí’s understanding of paranoia but also reveals his preference of surface (of painting) to depth (of poetry) devised in the notion of simulacrum, separating the visual from the textual and inducing Breton’s and therefore Takiguchi’s criticism.49 For Dalí, simulacrum aims to show how representation could not only portray reality but also undermine it. As this potential makes it ‘corrosive’, it is embraced by the young Surrealist photographers in Japan seeking the means for politically effective action in the domain of visual culture.50 Rothman proposes that ‘Rotting Donkey’ can be read as a catalogue of different types of images emerging from the ‘corrosive simulacra’, and it is the use of blood, excrement and putrefaction for the achievement of repulsive simulacrum that becomes problematic for both Takiguchi and Yamanaka. Whereas their objection to the use of such radical

pictorial elements might be read as a fear of provoking the state censors in

Japan, we should also remember that this element of Dalí’s work was the subject of much controversy even among the core French group. Takiguchi’s familiarity with Bataille’s ridiculing of The Lugubrious Game is telling of the extent to which criticism of Dalí was also known in Japan.51 Regardless of the prevailing opinions among the chief critics, photographers in different amateur clubs across Japan (including Abe, Sakata and Shimozato) experimented extensively with Dalí’s methods. Whereas their preferences remained individual, they can be understood to draw their inspiration from his well-known call to ‘systematise confusion’ and thus contribute to the total discredit of ‘the world of reality’, also made in ‘Rotten Donkey’.52 Their heterogeneous approaches to Dalí’s work are subsumed by their individual positions, but, as we shall see in this chapter, they also manifest a shared interest in a focused exploration of the marginal and insignificant, argued by Rothman to be one of the main characteristics of Dalí’s work.

Scale and perspective Although the articulation of ‘plasticity’ entailed a significant theoretical debate

about the connections between Surrealist and abstract painting and photography in Japan, the Surrealist object still remained the main preoccupation in practice. Regardless of the popularity of Surrealist object photographs, there were only a small number of actual objects produced by Japanese artists at the time. Several exceptions were seen in the first exhibition of a newly formed Sōki Art Association (Sōki Bijutsu Kyōkai) consisting of nineteen members assembled from different art collectives to form another group of Surrealist orientation in July 1938.53 The only exhibition of the association was held in Kyoto and showed artworks made in response to the theme of ‘Fire’, proposed by Takiguchi. These include an object by Tsuchiya Yoshio and its photographic rendition by Abe entitled Working at Night (Yakan sagyō), which offers a suitable point of departure for understanding how Surrealist photography developed in Japan under the latest discursive shift (Figure 5.1). Takiguchi reports from the exhibition for the February 1939 issue of Mizue,

with photographs of objects and an afterword submitted by Abe.54 For Takiguchi, the very fact that objects are seen in the text as photographic reproductions reflects on the specificity of the medium’s treatment of three-dimensionality and the best examples of this relationship are Atget’s photographs of mannequins and shop windows.55 In the afterword, Abe reasserts Takiguchi’s view – that photographs of objects are different from objects themselves – and exemplifies this by his collaboration with Tsuchiya, whose artwork becomes interpreted by the camera lens once it is photographed. He also reveals the final image to be a collage: the object, which includes a wide base holding a vertical pole upon

Figure 5.1 Abe Yoshifumi, Working at Night, 1938, produced by Tsuchiya Yoshio,

MOMAT/DNPartcom © Abe Yoshimori.

which a round shaped wheel-like part is seen attached by two strings, reminded

Abe of clouds. Tsuchiya asked him to include this association in the image and he chose an existing photograph of clouds from his collection and used it for the background.56 Displacing a photographic rendition of the object against a view of the sky, Abe’s final image achieves a complete defamiliarization of its size. By such simple photographic tools as close-up, a possibly insignificantly small object is isolated from its appearance in reality and elevated through representation. The large size of Abe’s print (48.4 × 40.7 cm) also adds to this effect. As Ades points out, whereas photographs of existing Surrealist objects can enhance their effect, the photo-objects that are created by photography depend upon the special effects of close-up and magnification.57 Both Abe and Takiguchi confirm this difference, and their comments register the popularity of the Surrealist object among photographers in Japan after Kaigai Chōgenjitsushugi Sakuhin ten. However, the final impact of Abe’s photo-object is also achieved in the choice of an unrelated and allusive background. In its approach, Working

Figure 5.2 Abe Yoshifumi, Flow, Photo Times, Vol. 16, February 1939, unpaginated,

courtesy of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum © Abe Yoshimori.

at Night evokes ‘Involuntary Sculptures’, a feature from Minotaure (1933) in

which Brassaï photographed objects presented by Dalí to the Surrealist object experiment sessions, also using close-ups and ambiguous backgrounds to intensify their effect.58 As Baker points out, the final effect of the ‘small-scale close-ups of even smaller objects’ does not depend on enlargement as such but relies on the alienating proximity to a nondescript background.59 Such an application of close-up, as a means of defamiliarization of objects,

combined with the use of alienating background as a tool for isolating objects from their signification in reality, is not specific to Working at Night but also informs a number of photographic renditions of the Surrealist object produced in Japan throughout 1939. For instance, the February 1939 issue of Photo Times includes Abe’s photograph titled Flow (Nagare) (Figure 5.2). It shows a close-up view of several pieces of cloth folded together so as to indicate a flow of water, placed within a nondescript landscape. In the explanatory note, Abe refers to Jean Cocteau so as to note how a process of creation cannot rely only on imagination but also has to account for representation, pointing at the constructed nature of his image. Shimozato’s The Ninth Continent (Dai kyū tairiku ni te), which shows a metal spoon in close-up suspended above a desolate landscape, is another photograph that adopts the same approach and it was seen in the April issue of the magazine (Figure 5.3). In the accompanying note, Shimozato describes the world portrayed as if ‘existing inside a Magritte painting’.60 The note thus explicates the Surrealist origin of work, whereas Takiguchi’s comment upon Imai’s

Figure 5.3 Shimozato Yoshio, The Ninth Continent, Photo Times, Vol. 16, April 1939,

unpaginated, courtesy of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum © Shimozato Masao. Still Life (Seibutsu), seen in the August volume of the magazine, only indicates

how its humorous effect is achieved in application of a close-up (Figure 5.4). The photograph shows a single pea shell defamiliarized by the inside-out arrangement of several seeds on its edges and also uses the obliteration of the background to give primacy to a small and insignificant object. The isolation of objects is a well-known strategy in art production and is

conventionally used as a method for breaking away from the standard mobilization of their representation towards a certain, mostly commercial end.61 An object isolated from its habitual mode of circulation is rendered inoperative in terms of its assigned position within the capitalist relations of exchange. However, such isolation of objects is not merely depicting economic or social relations but also works as a trigger point to the viewer, infecting a type of slowness or stillness against the speed of everyday life.62 Keeping in mind previously expressed intentions to forge relations with the viewer by both Abe and Shimozato, these photographs not only portray a certain type of objects but also establish a relationship with the viewer in terms of the wider social field in which they acquire their meaning. This connection is established in the three photographs (Figures 5.2, 5.3 and 5.4) through their shared interest to represent a certain movement. Namely, whereas the title of Abe’s photograph is also evoked in figural terms – as a flow of water or the economic and political flows in which the object would assume its meaning – the folding of

Figure 5.4 Imai Shigeru, Still Life, Photo Times, Vol. 16, August 1939, unpaginated,

courtesy of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum.

cloth onto itself suggests a suspension of movement and a trapping of the flow.

A similar suspension is suggested in Shimozato’s rendition of a spoon above an alien ground, whereas in the case of Imai it reappears as a precarious suspension of peas on the edges of the shell. What they are thus communicating to the viewer is a visual rendition of Japanese society in 1939, equally suspended, ambiguous and uncertain as the term ‘plasticity’. As Yumiko Iida describes it, a bleak vision of inner loss, anxiety and groundlessness was shared by most Japanese intellectuals of the time, regardless of their ideological differences.63 In addition, the images also echo the simultaneous suspending of the legal system, intensifying the state of emergency in Japan – existing since the Manchurian Incident – with the introduction of the National Mobilisation Law in 1938. Another prominent characteristic of these photographs is an attempt to

assign relevance to insignificant objects such as a cloth, a spoon or a pea shell. This mobilization of scale can be traced back to Mesemu zoku, where the accentuating of plant’s features was achieved by the use of close-up and nondescript background, but also where a cactus was seen as larger than a house in the opening images on both sides of the album. Whereas for Shimozato the reversal of scale is achieved through the paranoiac-critical method, and as much as Dalí attested to the same fascination for both close-up and small and insignificant details, such portrayal of objects departs from Dalí’s description of the method for photography. In ‘Non-Euclidean Psychology of a Photograph’

(1935) Dalí makes use of it in his discussion of a threadless spool (la bobine

sans fil) seen in the bottom corner of a vernacular photograph in order to affirm the camera’s objectivity in showing the world as equally inhabited by both small and large things.64 However, whereas in Dalí’s analysis of the photograph the attention moves away from the centre to the ‘stupid and insignificant’ thing on the margin, in Mesemu zoku and the above examples such a thing assumes a position of central importance. The specific application of close-up and alien landscape thus remains closer to ‘Involuntary Sculptures’, as it foregrounds the ambiguity of the objects seen, their position in the system of signification and the sociopolitical conditions that they reflect. Nevertheless, whereas in most of the cases the object shown remains

ambiguous, it also assumes a symbolic value at times, either by its implied meaning or by the position it is allocated in the photograph, and in this manner they resemble more closely Dalí’s paintings, where certain motifs of special importance are often rendered in colossal size so as to emphasize the artist’s obsession with them.65 Surrealist photography in Japan during 1939, therefore, took its cue not only from the application of Dalí’s paranoia-criticism in photography but from its specific treatment in painting. In other words, whereas insignificant objects were primarily rendered as of central importance – through reversal of scales and the use of close-up and elusive background – featureless plane, distant horizon and grey sky, all frequenting Surrealist landscapes in paintings by Arp, Dalí and Tanguy, are also important to note for the understanding of Surrealist photography produced in 1939 under the rubric of ‘plasticity’. For instance, we can establish a strong interest in the particular displacement

of scales of significance, or a reversal between high and low and large and small, in Spirit of the Sea (Umi no sei), Takahashi’s photograph showing a woman in a kimono dress standing on the seashore in Fukuoka with a hand raised to greet a magnified shell, seen against a seascape (Figure 5.5). Published in the June 1938 issue of Kameraman it was accompanied by an article titled ‘Two Impressions’.66 The text is an elaboration of amateur photography’s social value against professional photojournalism and claims that artistic tendencies should be considered as equally relevant regardless of the fact that they originate in individual world views.67 Primarily communicating a self-reflexive commentary regarding the relevance of amateur photography, Takahashi’s opinion needs to be taken into account vis-à-vis Sakata’s frequent visits to Fukuoka throughout 1938 and 1939, when he discussed Surrealist photography with local artists such as Hisano Hisashi and Takahashi on a regular basis, carrying with him volumes of Caheirs d’art and Minotaure to stimulate the conversation.68 In addition, the activities of Fukuoka-based photographers developed in a close approximation to practitioners from Osaka and especially Yasui, whose work most probably inspires the staged character of Spirit of the Sea.69 The photograph thus implies a focused and coordinated celebration of artistic photography among the so-called amateurs, as it reverses the scales of

Figure 5.5 Takahashi Wataru, Spirit of the Sea, Kameraman, June 1938, page 8,

courtesy of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum.

significance by ascribing a marginal object such as a seashell a position of central

consideration in the image. However, the symbolic value of the enlarged shell can also be assessed against the relevance of the sun in the collective Japanese imagination, as a symbol of the nation’s mythical origin and a central feature of its national flag, referred to as the ‘circle of the sun’. Although Sakata makes sure to divorce the potential symbolic reading of such universally recognizable motifs as the sun, in Takiguchi’s later recollection symbolization was an important way for the expression of freedom on the part of Japanese artists at the time.70 In June 1939, a special volume of Camera Art, dedicated to the ‘new inquiry

in plasticity’ (atarashii zōkei no tsuikyū), evidences a strong affiliation between the members of different clubs following Takiguchi’s announcement of the new

term. It includes submissions from Inagaki, Sakata, Shimozato and Tajima from

Nagoya but also Nagata from Tokyo and Takahashi from Fukuoka, attesting to the diversity of approaches that the new contextual framework mobilized. Takahashi’s photograph seen in the volume uses a straight line for the title and shows a chair together with two tree branches placed within a deserted landscape (Figure 5.6). The figurative resemblance with Surrealist painting is ostensible and is not limited to the displacement of an everyday object in an alien landscape but includes a specific pictorial treatment of that landscape as well. As Ōtani suggests, Surrealist painting inspired by Dalí’s work in Japan after

1935 regularly featured the horizon, evoking a utopian desire to escape the ‘here’ and ‘now’.71 It is with regard to the line of the horizon that the objects seen in such landscapes assume their meaning, as it creates a ‘passageway’ between fantasy and reality.72 Whereas a line of the horizon offers an axis against which the objects are affirmed or subverted in such photographs as Spirit of the Sea, it becomes the only stable reference point in images emptied of any substance or material that would reveal their meaning in reality throughout 1939. In Takahashi’s photograph from Camera Art, the elevated line of the horizon distorts and complicates the idea of space in order to sever its ties with the real and give way to an experience of simulacra, in accordance with Dalí’s own preference for the surface. As Ades points out, however, it is not the horizon line per se that enables this experience but a more general use of perspective: dramatizing distance and scale by raising the horizon, perspectival illusion helps the artificial creation of space and is used in Dalí’s painting so as to obscure the relations between the elements of the image.73 Furthermore, it is through a particular use of shadow, as a crucial perspectival tool, that figures or objects are set in such artificial space. 74 Whereas the clear line of the horizon enables a straightforward reversal of

scales, as in the case of Spirit of the Sea, a more ambitious use of perspective and shadow as an element of its construction produces the effect of several Surrealist photo-objects in 1939. The shadow not only grounds Abe’s Flow but also Imai’s Still Life and becomes of central relevance to Takahashi’s landscape view. In Takahashi’s photograph, shadows achieve the credibility of the imaginary space, but they also render specific forms themselves, adding to the viewing experience. An element of Dalí’s painting used towards this end is the quality of light that helps the creation of a particular atmosphere, which in Takahashi’s case suggests a flat, barren and featureless quality. According to Ades, Dalí’s particular use of perspective aimed specifically towards ‘optical insecurity’, with warped shadows and scales reinforcing anxiety and destabilizing the position of the viewer.75 One final element that achieves this confusion and disorientation is anamorphism – the stretching, elongating and distorting of figures and objects so that they are not immediately recognizable – which is attained in Takahsashi’s photograph by the shadows of objects rather than objects themselves. What this anamorphic rendition of elements of an image accomplishes, according to Ades,

Figure 5.6 Takahashi Wataru, ‘___’, Camera Art, June 1939, page 7, courtesy of Tokyo

Photographic Art Museum.

is that ‘in place of the alternatives of distance and proximity, what emerges is

the formless, which leaves the viewer in a limbo’. 76 Unlike in the classical use of anamorphism, however, Dalí does not resolve the confused image but leaves it open to interpretation, in accordance with his paranoiac-critical method.

Photographic technology If we took stock, the Camera Art issue evidences the taking root of what Takiguchi

defined as zōkei shashin in several centres of Surrealist photography in Japan. This practice is primarily characterized by the production of Surrealist objects, placed within nondescript and fantastical landscapes, with a preference for small objects that sometimes possess symbolic value. The main preoccupation of this production in 1939 was thus a reversal of positions of significance, mainly in the attempt to affirm amateur photography, with any potentially subversive material further distorted through portrayals of decontextualized objects that are often seen in a suspended movement. We can consider this practice as moving even further away from language: in an increasingly oppressive political climate, Surrealist photographers in 1939 were obfuscating the nature of their work not only through explicit dismissal of any political agenda but also through the allusiveness and ambiguity of the visual material. What is an essential feature of the majority of photographs that mediate the Surrealist objects in such a manner is that although they produce an independent image, they remain bound to the objects themselves in their material quality. In such circumstances, a possibility that an object-photograph could affect and thus possibly change reality, as suggested by Dalí’s ‘corrosive simulacra’, becomes an idea of great resonance and is embraced by Sakata. Most of the photographers from Nagoya who took part in Mesemu

zoku continued to work throughout 1939 in what Shimozato defined as the ‘camera’s automatism’, using close-up and cropping to offer abstracted views of everyday scenery and mostly focusing on natural objects. However, the captions accompanying their submissions to Photo Times avoided the use of the word ‘Surrealism’ or even the euphemistic terms such as the ‘Surrealist Freud Photos’. Instead, they subscribed to an allusive ‘plasticism’ or even more ambiguous alternatives such as ‘something’ and ‘energy’. For instance, in the July 1939 issue of Photo Times, Yamanaka describes Inagaki’s Touching and Feeling at Night (Yoru no shokkaku) and Tajima’s Bad Omen (Kyōchō) in terms of their ‘plastic potential’.77 Also, Sakata describes Shimozato’s Decision (Kettei ni tsuite) and Tajima’s untitled photograph submitted to the November issue in reference to ‘plasticity’ for the former and ‘energy’ for the latter.78 A Surrealist content is even indicated by ‘something’ (samushingu), used by Takiguchi to describe a straight shot of a Mesemb cactus titled Beautiful Fissure (Utsukushii kiretsu), Tajima’s submission to the magazine in March.79 Whereas the Surrealist

origin of ‘plasticism’ was offered in various texts, seemingly vitalist ‘energy’ or

completely obscure ‘something’ assigns an invisible psychological quality to the photographs, gradually obscuring their Surrealist origin. In such circumstance, Sakata continued to develop an independent approach

to photography to that of Shimozato’s ‘camera’s automatism’, in relation to his continuous interest in abstraction. This particular approach is also described in Yamanaka’s article dedicated to Sakata’s work, published in Shashin saron in January 1939.80 In this text, Yamanaka repeats his insistence on the poetic essence of avant-garde following the Nagoya meeting and insists that in photography it needs to be delivered through the mechanical properties specific to the medium.81 Yamanaka highly values Sakata’s achievement of this goal, discussing four images published in the text, including Flowing Eyeball (Medama ga nagareru). In this photograph, Sakata uses a single shot of an open fan to produce a montage that suggests a ‘flowing’ eye, its pupil formed in the crossover of the semi-round shape of the fan’s base when combined with a reverse, mirror image of itself (Figure 5.7). The effect of flowing is achieved in the folds of the fan whereas the eye is depicted by manipulating one of the images in the dark room so as to curve the ending upwards. To Yamanaka, a poetic impression of the object is achieved by using photographic ‘tricks’, alluding to montage and manipulation of the print. To him, such technological trickery is necessarily

Figure 5.7 Yamanaka Chirū, ‘Sakata Minoru’s Artwork’, Shashin saron, January 1939,

pages 48–49, courtesy of JCII Camera Museum © Sakata Takashi.

required of photography if it wishes to take on the poetic heritage of Surrealist

and abstract art in its avant-garde claim. Yamanaka recognizes the technological ability immanent to photography to deliver Surrealist content, and his recognition of Sakata’s practice under such terms is also resonant with Takiguchi’s later definition of plasticity. Both critics thus agree that the poetic quality of Surrealist photography can be successfully delivered through the technical properties of the photographic medium, overcoming their previous differences towards the best suitable means for the use of photography in Surrealism. This affirmation of photographic technology as a means of delivering abstract

renditions of the Surrealist object became the main purpose of Sakata’s new work. A continuation of Sakata’s interests from zen’ei shashin to zōkei shashin is suggested in an article published in the December 1938 issue of Photo Times, where he maps out his understanding of the relevance of photography’s technological properties in similar terms as in the later ‘Explanation’.82 The new project is partly presented and explained in ‘Inventory Notebook of a Picture Making Process’, published in Photo Times in a series of three instalments, in April, May and July of 1939. 83 All the instalments describe different steps of the photographic process as a means of delivering an abstract but more scientific approach to Dalí’s paranoiac-critical method, making use of the term ‘plasticity’ to render the materiality of the Surrealist object in photography as capable of making an impact in reality through its claim as an artistic practice.84 Such an aim is argued by Sakata through examples of his own recent work, with each of more than twenty photographs discussed in detail, with regard to both their possible interpretations and technical specifications. Whereas the ‘Inventory’ renders this process clear step by step, the final results of his experiments are published across different publications, including Camera Art and Photo Times, and share some of the figurative preoccupations of Flowing Eyeball. These photographs result from his experiments with water glass, whereby a non-identified object is first distorted in the darkroom and then presented in a different context. In a photograph titled Parage, for instance, such a distorted image is placed

within a landscape and takes up a distinct anamorphic form (Figure 5.8). On the one hand, the image features similar properties to Takahashi’s work and although anamorphism takes up the central role it is, similar to Dalí, unresolved, only suggesting a paranoiac vision or multiple possibilities for interpretation.85 On the other hand, however, although Sakata disturbs the notion of scale by deploying close-up and a non-descript background he also achieves a significant reversal of the materiality of the photograph itself. Whereas the other photographs representing Surrealist objects throughout the year remain adhered to the materiality of what is photographed, Sakata metamorphoses the photographic material, which becomes not only the means through which an object is represented but also an object in itself. The distortion, or manipulation of the undisclosed print in the darkroom, takes up the role of representation,

Figure 5.8 Sakata Minoru, Parage, 1939, Private Collection, on deposit at Nagoya City

Art Museum © Sakata Takashi.

severing the ties between the image and the object it represents and thus, in

Dalínian terms, ‘corroding’ reality. This advanced use of photography’s technology coincided with the medium’s

acceptance as an established art form, announced by the inclusion of such photographers as Nakayama and Matsubara in the Kokuten in 1939. In the same year, Sakata and Shimozato submitted their works to the annual exhibition of the Free Artists’ Association and were among the rare Japanese photographers to be featured in Mizue in August. Their participation in an exhibition of a group mostly consisting of Surrealist artists should be seen as an attempt to establish their positions in the art world of the time, making alliances among Surrealist painters of the group (also including those with a specific interest in photography such as Hasegawa and Ei-Kyū). Shimozato highlights the importance of such integration in ‘Thoughts of a Photo Amateur’, published in June 1939. 86 In this text, he describes his frustration with the fact that those photographers who are interested in photography as an arts practice are considered ‘dilettantes’ within the photography ‘world’ and are looked down on as amateurs by the so-called professionals, primarily interested in photojournalism.87

Figure 5.9 Sakata Minoru, Sphere, 1939, Private Collection, on deposit at Nagoya City

Art Museum © Sakata Takashi.

However, whereas Shimozato seems to be advocating the same reversal of

the positions of relevance as Takahashi, the methodology assumed is significantly different and its final result does not make apparent the primary Surrealist origin of the intended effect or the reversal of scales that it achieves in a focus on a small object. In Sakata’s case, the image is from the Sphere series, another result of his experiments produced that year and reproduced across different publications, in which his manipulated prints are sometimes merged with images of actual objects, a bean or a stone (Figure 5.9). The main interest in the reversal of scales using Dalí’s paranoiac-critical method is maintained, as he is continuing to show close-up views of small and insignificant things. Given the impressive size of the series (approximately 50 cm × 60 cm) this reversal also operates through the experience of viewing the print. 88 Unlike Shimozato’s ‘camera’s automatism’, however, this body of work did not achieve a focused public presentation and its elaboration is scattered across different articles. All the elements of the project remain recognizable at least in terms of figuration, as a clear thread of his interest in abstraction can be followed from the purely technical Flowing Eyeball, through

the anamorphic Parage and into the ‘corrosive’ Sphere. However, this particular

focus is lost to the final results, as Sakata primarily presents his work as ‘artistic’ rather than ‘Surrealist’. The repeated denial of any symbolical value that a spherical object can assume in Japan suggests that the problems encountered in the publication of Mesemu zoku also extended to Sakata’s work. Whereas symbolism is partly tolerated with regard to the expression of sexual desire, it becomes completely intolerable when it comes close to the possibility of a political criticism, or symbolic readings of the ‘circle of the sun’. Although Sakata manages to come up with an authentic and ambitious way to take advantage of the recent focus on plasticity, and develop through the concept a particular way by which photography could not only represent an object but also act as one, the final impact of his work becomes partly absorbed by its artistic ambition.

6

LOCALITY As the Pacific War was drawing near, the increasing pressures on the Japanese

public to contribute to the war efforts started to extend to the open scrutiny of Surrealist photography. In a June 1939 article, for instance, Dan Mitsuji asks how can a practice that is ‘separated’ from reality be of use to society at the time of war.1 Even poetic and complex visual material became in danger of public dismissal. Nakayama’s photographs of the city of Kobe, commissioned by the Kobe Tourist Bureau and seen in a touring exhibition in Tokyo, Kyoto and Nagoya in 1939, were thus criticized in the March volume of Asahi Camera, as the artist was allegedly not the best-suited person for the job.2 The series of photographs in question records the best-known places in the city in a documentary manner but was disregarded under the pretext that Nakayama’s lyricism went against the established values of realism in photojournalist photography.3 Nakayama was known not only for his interest in Surrealism and his bohemian life style but also as somebody who questioned the view of photography as a true document of reality in a January 1938 note published in Kamera kurabu. Under a bust portrait of a woman sitter wearing a kimono dress and traditional hairstyle titled Decoration (Dekoreishon), he writes: ‘Photography is not a part of nature. A portrait photograph is not the very person it shows. It is a different, new thing.’4 At the same time, the role of photography in state promotion and propaganda

was also a prominent subject of discussion in the press, as the medium was used in the production of large-scale photomurals for the international expositions in Paris (1937), San Francisco (1939) and New York (1939–1940). These photomurals were commissioned by the Society for International Cultural Relations and sponsored by the largest national bodies, but were heavily relying on such modernist techniques as montage to achieve their effect.5 Moreover, the photographic team selected for the Paris exposition enlisted Koishi, who joined the Japan Workshop photographers – Hara Hiromu, Kimura and Watanabe Yoshio – regardless of the fact that he was criticized for his radical Surrealist imagery produced in montage by the members of the same agency only several years before. The team of four photographers produced three photomurals over the course of a single month, and the organizers were thus criticized because of the substantial costs that were invested in the construction of the pavilion.6

LOCALITY After Paris, it was recognized that the commission required a closer

coordination of architecture, photography and the objects displayed at the site. The responsibility for the design of the pavilions in New York and Chicago was thus entrusted to the Bauhaus-trained Iwao, whereas the supervision of photomurals was assigned to a rising star of photojournalism, Domon Ken.7 These expositions were seen by a record number of visitors who amounted to 44 million people over the two seasons of display in 1939 and 1940. 8 However, regardless of the fact that the artists involved in the commission were more established in the public domain, their participation in the state propaganda efforts was not entirely uncritical. For example, in a comment about a photograph of a plane that was later included in the exposition, published in the March 1939 issue of Photo Times, Domon explained how it was awkward to him that such a shot, taken without much thinking and that to him represented a strange feeling of solitude that he was experiencing on the day, should become a national emblem.9 Under such circumstances, Takiguchi’s repeated insistence on the Surrealist

mobilization of a straight shot throughout 1938 and 1939 may be reconsidered against the mounting pressure on all photographers to fall in line with the mainstream, photojournalist approach to photography. This situation entailed the integration of artistic strands of ‘new’ photography based on radical photographic techniques such as montage in public projects of national concern at the end of the decade. As we shall see below, it also translated to the demand that ‘avant-garde’ photographers contribute to the war efforts within the discourse of ‘plastic’ photography. Against such a background, the straight, documentary shot became a space of tension between (amateur-artistic) Surrealist and (professional) photojournalist practices. On the one hand, such a photograph was scrutinized in those cases when it was allegedly affirming a lyrical and subjective world view or an artistic intention, especially if it was connected to Surrealism in any way. On the other hand, the state propaganda programme was happy to applaud such subjective and artistic or even openly Surrealist photographs, as long as photographers were ready to eschew any political criticism and nominally support the war efforts in public. As we shall also see in this chapter, this tension became even more complex with the approximation of content as well as form, or when Surrealist photographers started focusing on the representation of the vernacular quality of everyday life in Japan while it was simultaneously claimed in fascist rhetoric as unique and eternal.

Exchange Run by a commercial company, Oriental, Photo Times published both Surrealist

and photojournalist photographs in parallel and, under the increased demands for contributions to the military operations, it started making attempts to establish

SURREALISM AND PHOTOGRAPHY IN 1930s JAPAN a communication between them in 1939. In the March issue, the magazine

published a report of a joint meeting between amateur and professional photographers of different aspirations, organized under the title ‘The Way for Photography from Now On’.10 Although the report evidences an attempt to unite diverse practitioners, none of the representatives from the previous year’s AvantGarde Photography Symposium attended the gathering except for Nagata. After Takiguchi announced the change of the Tokyo club’s name, however, the June issue reports on another joint meeting that took place between Koishi, the Tokyo club members – Abe, Imai and Nagata – and members of the Young People’s Photojournalism Research Association (Seinen Hōdō Shashin Kenkyūkai, 1938), including Domon, which was organized by the magazine so as to address the subject of ‘The Continent and Photography’.11 The ‘continent’ (tairiku) was a term originating in Japan’s foreign policies of pan-Asianism and imperial expansion developing since the nineteenth century, whereas the meeting was set up as a session for sharing experiences following Koishi’s and Imai’s assignments to the occupied territories in China. The discussion largely concerned the most suitable equipment and working conditions and took place among photographers who had no previous experience of travelling abroad. Rather than purely photojournalist, however, these assignments were contextualized as a cultural exchange and were presented as an opportunity to exhibit work and engage with the local photographic scene. Oriental was also participating in this supposed exchange and was employing Abe and Watanabe on one such assignment between March and November of that year. In view of this report it becomes clear that similar to shinkō shashin, zen’ei

shashin practitioners of Surrealist orientation (such as Imai) were mobilized in the war efforts from 1939 onwards. However, on the part of such photographers, this situation did not result in abandoning their Surrealist work within the framework of photographic ‘plasticity’. Both Abe and Koishi later exhibited photographs produced over the course of their assignments under such terms. For instance, Koishi’s series Han sekai (Half World), also published as a book, was exhibited at the twenty-ninth Namiten in 1940 and is perceived as not simply a documentary but an ironic rendition of everyday life in the occupied territories. 12 On Abe’s part, he helped establish the Coalition Association for Photographic Plasticity (Dairen Shashin Zōkei Kenkyūkai) in China on 18 May 1939, while also becoming a member of the primary Surrealist Art and Culture Association in Japan, founded a month before, and exhibiting at their inaugural exhibition. 13 Abe even had plans to organize an exhibition of ‘progressive’ photography while on his assignment and to show his photographs alongside those by other Surrealist photographers in Japan such as Nagata, Sakata and Shimozato.14 Abe’s work is particularly interesting to observe in this context for the prominent

position that he occupied in Surrealist photography circles in the country. His two cover pages for Photo Times in May and June 1937, for example,

Figure 6.1 Abe Yoshifumi, Two Poses, Photo Times, Vol. 16, March 1939, pages 6–7, courtesy of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum © Abe Yoshimori. evidence his well-known interest in the Surrealist object and affirm his key role

in the activities of the Tokyo club. Regardless of these achievements, he did not develop a strong critical voice and admitted his insecurity when expressing himself in writing.15 Abe preferred the theoretical premises of his work to be delivered by the chief critic of the Tokyo club and, in a later recollection, he even confirmed that whatever he or Nagata had to say Takiguchi’s critical force always prevailed.16 In addition, Photo Times started asking photographers themselves to submit textual notes to the images published in the magazine towards the end of 1939. 17 Therefore, Abe’s submissions to the magazine throughout 1939 and 1940 either remain unaccompanied textually or are explained very briefly by Abe himself. These submissions, however, take up a singular, consistent and instantly recognizable format: two photographs are paired and seen together across full pages, often under a single title. Two Poses (Futatsu no pōzu) from the March 1939 issue shows portraits

of two women sitters and is the first of these submissions (Figure 6.1). Abe explains in the accompanying note how these are not standard portraits but expressions of his interest in object photography. They involve juxtaposing of several oppositions, showing the sitters in traditional and modern clothes, in an interior and exterior setting and in seated and standing poses. The format is maintained in Abe’s later submissions, and in the February 1940 issue Two

Figure 6.2 Abe Yoshifumi, Two Landscapes, Photo Times, Vol. 16, February 1940,

pages 38–39, courtesy of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum © Abe Yoshimori.

Landscapes (Futatsu no fūkei) shows the Chinese guardian lions (shishi) in a similar manner, placed in front of the cultural sites in East Asia: the Church of the Saviour in Beijing (1890) on the left and the State Museum (a national museum of Manchukuo) in Mukden on the right (Figure 6.2).18 Most of Abe’s photographs taken during his assignment on the ‘continent’ focus on everyday objects and scenes and are published consecutively in January, February and May 1940. His submission to the first exhibition of Art and Culture is seen in a direct continuation, in the June issue, and suggests a singular body of work. Rendered in solarization and titled as White Portrait (Shiroi pōtorēto) and Black Portrait (Kuroi pōtorēto), they show two bust portraits reminiscent of Two Poses: the focus on oppositions is still maintained, not only by the black-and-white renditions of the prints but also by the open and closed eyes of the sitters in two respective images. Avant-garde photographers such as Abe were not the first artists to travel

to Manchukuo and the occupied territories in East Asia. Even the notion of the avant-garde was not unknown to artists working there, as Pari Tōkyō also travelled to Dalian in April 1933.19 The exhibition was similarly effective as in Japan and had such a strong impact on some of the local artists that they started practising Surrealism from then onwards, setting up different groups and seeking the means of exchange with Surrealist artists in Japan.20 Fukuzawa’s visit to Manchukuo in 1935, lasting four months, was among the most prominent

events on the local avant-garde scene, as the Surrealist artist visited several cities

in the region, giving lectures and exhibiting his work. Annika Culver discusses such artistic exchange in terms of ‘avant-garde propaganda’, claiming that every artist (or photographer), regardless of their political orientation, endorsed the state each time when they travelled to, discussed or produced work related to the colonies.21 Abe’s journey, described in the March 1940 issue of Photo Times, follows to an extent in Fukuzawa’s steps, visiting what Culver describes as a regular ‘tour’ for Japanese artists travelling to Manchukuo: he arrived in Mukden and travelled to Hsinnking (now Chengchun), Harbin, Dalian, Beijing and Zhangjiakou, taking a partly different route to Watanabe.22 Like Fukuzawa before him, he also exhibited his explicitly Surrealist work and took part in discussions. Indeed, Abe also reports his exposure to such nationalist organizations as the Manchukuo Concordia Association (Manshūkoku Kyōwakai, 1932–1945) political party and the pan-Asian idea of Five Races Under One Union (Gozoku Kyōwa) that they promoted, immediately upon his arrival.23

roundtable

Abe described his journey at a round-table meeting organized by Oriental

that also included Hayashi Ken’ichi from the Cabinet Information Bureau as well as Sakata and Takiguchi. Considering the presence of a state official, Abe’s referencing of state propaganda – behind such organizations as the Manchukuo Concordia Association – is understandable under Culver’s proposition that the ‘tour’ was often taken as a gesture of ‘conversion’ among previously leftist writers and artists.24 As Namigata Tsuyoshi notes, Hayashi made a gentle but firm statement at the meeting that any difference in political opinions can be resolved through patriotism, the ultimate aim for travelling to the ‘continent’ that must also be shared by avant-garde photographers.25 This opinion was an official position that was to become even more severe in the following year. However, Takiguchi voiced a decisive and persistent view that avant-garde photographers, although respecting the state, remain independent of politics and that this autonomy is what ultimately defines the avant-garde.26 Here, Takiguchi again takes up the role of an official critical voice and is explicitly called upon by Abe to do so.27 He makes a similar statement on the occasion of the founding of the Art and Culture Association – that avant-garde art remains independent from politics – and this situation follows closely the re-orientation of Surrealist political attitudes in the later part of the 1930s, formulating in Japan not only with regard to the political attitudes of the proletarian left but also with regard to the nationalist propaganda programme on the right.28 As Namigata also notes, this political position of Surrealism has often been

misread in terms of the general, Eurocentric understanding of avant-garde art. Although it is understood as inseparable from politics in such seminal studies as Bürger’s, taken as a basis for Culver’s understanding of ‘avantgarde propaganda’, Namigata stresses a different situation in 1930s Japan. As a consequence of the suppression of proletarian art and literature in Japan,

avant-garde became associated not only with Communism but even more so

with Surrealism. In such a situation, Namigata understands the willingness on the part of such (primarily Surrealist) avant-garde artists and photographers to partake in the exchange with art and photography clubs and associations in the occupied territories and colonies as an attempt to prove their autonomy.29 Here, what becomes the main issue is the relationship between politics and aesthetics, famously described by Benjamin in the aftermath to his ‘Work of Art’ essay (1936) as the deadlock between the ‘politicising of art’ (on the left) and the ‘aestheticisation of politics’ (on the right).30 However, this binary articulation is increasingly perceived as insufficient in the debates surrounding the possibility of political action, especially when described from the point of view of practice.31 As many authors have argued, the refusal of political engagement was perceived as the only way through which artists in Japan could exercise any form of artistic freedom ever since the 1920s, given the complete and undisputable authority of the state.32 In Abe’s case in particular, although he professes his exposure to such ideological propaganda as the idea of ‘one union’, we should keep in mind that his photographic output takes up a consistent and recognizable manner of Surrealist photographic circulation in 1930s Japan: strange and arresting oppositions are brought together in a deliberately constructed and sometimes humorous manner and are presented to the viewer across full pages with little if any textual information. The approach is maintained both in his commercial assignments and in his purely Surrealist submissions to the Art and Culture exhibition, and none of these images shows positive renditions of the region’s development and prosperity, which Culver describes to have been the main characteristics of the artistic output of ‘avant-garde propaganda’.33 As a matter of fact, some of Abe’s photographs are better situated in what

Kanneth Ruoff describes to have been perceived as the expansion of Imperial Japan’s heritage landscape or the booming tourism to the occupied territories and colonies in East Asia.34 On one level Two Landscapes convey a tension between the old and the new or the foreign and the local. On another level, the posing of guardian lions in the same manner as many visitors of the specific locations echoes numerous snaps taken over the increasingly popular tourist tours to the ‘continent’ ever since the onset of the Second Sino-Japanese War. As Omuka’s analysis shows, Abe was not only aware of the other Surrealist avantgarde artists who used photography during their often voluntary visits to the ‘continent’ – publishing articles about Fukuzawa in the May 1940 issue of Photo Times and Saitō Yoshishige in the July 1941 issue of Mizue – but even adopted formal characteristics of such works known to have been ‘ironic’ in his take on the popular tourist site of Yungang Grottoes.35 Whereas his Two Landscapes features a Surrealist treatment of the body and the everyday, it nevertheless receives public consent and is considered a prominent means of practice at the time of war. This consent is generously granted to Abe, while it is simultaneously

denied to Nakayama regardless of the same approach to photography – as a

constructed, staged event – in their work. The only difference, ostensibly, is Abe’s willingness to formally contribute to the war effort, or at least no oppose to it, even if it amounts to little more than taking his practice of Surrealist photography to the occupied territories of Imperial Japan. The focus on objects from everyday life, seen in Abe’s submissions to Photo

Times in 1940, by that point in the decade became a prominent feature of the delivery of Surrealist objects among photographers in Japan. During 1939, however, it also started to involve a particular preference for the vernacular, local culture. This shift of focus is announced in Sakata’s ‘Anti-Surrvariarism and Anti-Avantgardian: A Non-Avant-Garde Artist’s Boycott of Pseudo-Surrealism’, published in March 1939.36 In this article, Sakata blames the photography ‘world’, or monthly photo magazines and exhibitions, for driving Surrealist photography to ‘dilettantism’ in which ‘surreal’ (shūru) comes to stand for almost anything, with its methods often confused with Dada and without any awareness of automatism or paranoia-criticism. To Sakata, the condition results in a lot of ‘avant-garde make believe’ (zen’ei gokko) and ‘surreal play’ (shūru asobi) without much critical value.37 Furious with a case in which even the word ‘Surrealism’ was misspelled in Japanese in press, he declares that in such a situation it could equally be called anything, for example ‘variarism’ (with ‘variarist’ as its practitioner and ‘variaristic’ as its property).38 Furthermore, Sakata proposes that ‘dilettantism’ staining the understanding of Surrealist photography in Japan requires the development of a local movement that would bring it closer to home and calls for a ‘Japanised’ (nipponaizu sareru) practice.39 The link between traditional aesthetics and the Surrealist object in Japan

was already theorized in the previous year by both Takiguchi and Yamanaka, whereas an important development took place in Hasegawa’s contribution to the third exhibition of the Free Artists’ Association in 1939. An abstract artist and a founding member of the Independent Art Association, Hasegawa was actively involved in avant-garde circles in Japan following his studies in Europe and the United States but started developing an interest in photography during his own ‘tour’ of the ‘continent’ in 1938.40 He submitted a series of twelve photographs to the exhibition, titled Chronicle of One’s Native Place (Kyōdoshi), which comprises photographs of everyday scenes, mostly rendered in close-up and showing natural objects such as stones and trees. Eight photographs from the series were reprinted in Mizue in August 1939, where they are individually captioned and are accompanied with Hasegawa’s poetic notes.41 Although the photographs render natural and found objects in straight shots, very much in accordance with Takiguchi’s preferred manner for the delivery of Surrealism in the medium, the text displaces them from a definitive relation to reality.42 For example, a photograph titled Sliding Door (Shōji) shows a cropped image of a sliding door with its paper windows ornamented with abstract patterns

Figure 6.3 Hasegawa Saburō, Sliding Door, Photo Times, Vol. 16, September 1939, unpaginated, courtesy of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum. (Figure 6.3 ). In the accompanying note Hasegawa describes the image in terms

of his camera’s inability to resist the ‘plasticity’ of the house, situating it in the process of an automatic response to a chance encounter with the abstract quality of traditional aesthetics.43 Sliding Door reappears in the September 1939 issue of Photo Times alongside Sakata’s and Shimozato’s submissions to the same exhibition in which it was originally seen. The occasion was not the first time that Hasegawa and Sakata met, as they

had already collaborated on a series of photographs in 1938.44 Sakata’s view from ‘A Non-Avant-Garde Artist’s Boycott’ and the methodology of Hasegawa’s series thus read as closely related, at least in that they are both important precedents to the establishment of the Société Irf (Soshiete Irufu) club in Fukuoka, announced in the following, October 1939, issue of Photo Times.45 The same focus of the club on the delivery of objects in straight shots combined with a preference for traditional aesthetics is exemplified in the volume in Konomi Giichirō’s untitled photograph that is captioned as number two (Figure 6.4). It shows a view of a window panel with its individual papers in shreds, resulting in an abstract and suggestive texture.46 The club’s manifesto is printed beneath the image, with its opening paragraph introducing the club’s interest in the exploration of a poetic content behind an abstract form, similar to the work of Dalí and Tanguy.47 Following this introduction, the text reads:

Figure 6.4 Konomi Giichirō, Untitled, Photo Times, Vol. 16, October 1939, unpaginated, courtesy of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum.

Société Irf insists on locality. We believe that our forefathers who lived on the

Japanese soil have left us with a deep and noble surreal world and that the time has come for us who have the same blood running in our veins to be set free from the literal translations of Western Surrealism and start owning what we already have.48 The first two paragraphs thus contrast a well-known interest in both a Surrealist

poetic content and an abstract form among Nagoya-based photographers with the shift towards traditional aesthetics as a means of its communication. A reclaiming of ‘locality’ is also suggested in the club’s name, a reversal of the Japanese word furui for ‘old’ into a meaningless irufu, which accompanies the French word for ‘society’. In other words, the manifesto announces a shift of focus of Surrealist photography towards everyday life, under the impact of Hasegawa’s exploration of the Surrealist object in photography and in collaboration with Sakata during his visits to Fukuoka. The use of both words ‘surreal’ and ‘Surrealism’ in the text is a rare exception

to the prevailing situation in 1939, when most of the other photographers and critics had already moved on to substitute it with ‘plasticity’ or any other equally elusive term. The timing of the club’s founding is thus important to note, as an untitled text published in the magazine in its December 1939 issue announced the change of name of the Nagoya club to the Nagoya Photography Culture Association. In this move, Nagoya-based photographers stress the cultural value of their practice so as to justify their work against the increasing political pressures.49 However, such value is simultaneously articulated in an explicit relation to Surrealism, in coordination with a newly established Fukuoka-based club. At first glance, the move seems smart as it manages, once more, to recontextualize the ‘avant-garde’ activity and thus secures the continuation of practice. Upon closer observation, this time the compromise entails adopting a distinctly fascist register that evokes the rhetorical purity of ‘blood’ and the unique qualities of the Japanese ‘soil’ as a means of authenticating the specific locality of a ‘Japanised’ Surrealism. Although a tentative consensus that the Japanese state during the 1930s was neither totalitarian nor fascist still prevails, there is little doubt that fascist ideologies were a prominent feature of Japanese culture at the time.50 Whereas the preoccupation with everyday life in occupied colonies, it thus seems, allowed Surrealist photographers to exercise certain freedoms – such as the expression of irony – any involvement with the same space at home elicited an entanglement with the ideological apparatuses at work in all sectors of Japanese society. This entanglement is neither easy nor straightforward to undo but, as we shall see below, engendered several new formulations

of Surrealist photography in 1930s Japan among the best-established critics

and practitioners such as Sakata and Yamanaka.

Traditional aesthetics Sakata also refocused on straight photography for the delivery of an austere

aesthetics alongside the Société Irf in late 1939 and early 1940. In the circumstances when any artistic photography was scrutinized by military officials, he thus used the newly gained alliances with the artists such as Hasegawa to develop another project that shifted the practice back to a straight shot. This shift is already evidenced in a close-up photograph of a leaf, published on the cover of Photo Times in September 1939 as well as in Kamera kurabu in October 1939. On the cover page of Photo Times, the photograph is seen in black and red design and receives no caption, whereas its later rendition is titled as Lace Made by Insects (Mushi no tsukutta rēsu). This title suggests that the abstract shape of the leaf is achieved by the working of insects on its surface, producing an image of decomposition and ruin, similarly to Konomi’s untitled photograph. In a submission to the January 1940 issue of the magazine, Konomi reaffirms the interest in the everyday as a process that inscribes materials with cracks

Figure 6.5 Konomi Giichirō, White Door, Photo Times, Vol. 17, January 1940, unpaginated, courtesy of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum.

and fissures in White Door (Shiroi tobira) (Figure 6.5). The approach is further

supported in the same volume in submissions by Hisano from the Société Irf as well as by Inagaki and Tajima from the Nagoya club, offering abstracted renditions of natural and common-use objects and attesting to how different members of both clubs supported the practice in close coordination. The chief method remains abstraction, and it is still achieved in close-up views of objects. However, the insistence on a specific locality departs from Shimozato’s earlier definition of the ‘camera’s automatism’ as an abstraction of individual desire into its understanding as a mirror reflection of the social process determining everyday life. Shimozato was involved in Sakata’s experiments with the material properties

of photography in 1939 in his submissions to the Free Artists’ Association, as well as the latest shift. His article published by Photo Times in December 1939 and January 1940, however, attests to his difficulty in keeping up with Sakata’s production and it is his last text dedicated to photography.51 In turn, it was Yamanaka who theorized the shift of focus among the members of the Nagoya club in relation to Hasegawa’s series and the Société Irf, in terms of the relationship between plasticity and traditional aesthetics, in a text written for the July 1940 issue of Photo Times.52 In this text, Yamanaka writes about the recently formulated concept of ‘plasticity’ and describes the potential it holds for bringing forward Japanese traditional aesthetics, as seen in Japanese

Figure 6.6 Yamanaka Chirū, ‘Occasional Thoughts on Plastic Photography’, Photo Times, Vol. 17, July 1940, pages 60–61, courtesy of JCII Camera Museum © Sakata Takashi.

gardens and interior design, accompanying his writing with four photographs of traditional Japanese interior design taken by Sakata (Figure 6.6). In accordance with much of Sakata’s previous writing on the subject, Yamanaka closely relates plasticity to the work of Arp and Giacometti, and draws attention to the process of photographic renditions of objects, which allows the capture of ‘psychological’ and ‘literary’ content.53 However, as the traditional garden design transcends elusive subjective symbolism and is situated outside of what the French philosopher Henri Bergson described as a ‘world of flow’, he claims, it offers a basis for the development of plastic art and plastic photography. Against this view of zōkei shashin as existing beyond subjectivity and temporality, Yamanaka explains how a seeming turn to classicism could be best understood through the appreciation of Sakata’s recent practice, merging the cultural value of plastic photography with his interest in Japanese traditional design. The main potential of its austerity is to ‘render difficult things simple’, as an imperative of abstraction exemplified in the work of Arp and Miró.54 Discussing Sakata’s four photographs seen in the article, he insists how they maximize the plastic quality of a Japanese house using the capabilities of photographic apparatus to reinterpret it visually. Yamanaka’s referencing of Bergson, most probably with regard to his Matter

and Memory (1896) or later Creative Evolution (1907), where he developed an idea of time in the concept of ‘duration’ (la durée), becomes of importance for the use of the word ‘flow’, featured or suggested in a number of Surrealist photographs throughout 1939. Yamanaka’s insistence upon how plasticism is situated outside of this flow and in the constructed nature of Japanese gardens as subjects of contemplation proposes that zōkei shashin is not aimed at documenting reality but at deliberately constructing a type of objective abstraction that would reflect upon it. To Yamanaka, Sakata’s photographs are not simply portraying and thus mystifying Japanese interior design, famously celebrated in Tanizaki Junichirō’s In Praise of Shadows (1933) as one of the deepest-rooted qualities of Japanese culture. By ‘re-interpreting’ visually what he terms a ‘plastic quality’ of Japanese housing, these photographs were understood as objects of intellectual contemplation situated outside of the flow of life and time. Thus, the chief difference between Sakata’s approach to photography from that of nationalist propaganda is situated by Yamanaka in the understanding of the medium not as an index of reality but as a fabricated space that reflects those abstract processes that surround it. Although this understanding of plasticity separates art from life and thus enacts a rather traditional view of artistic practice, it ponders photography’s ability to perform this role even when it is executed in a documentary style. The difference between the two approaches to photography – one lulling the viewer into believing what they see and the other demanding a critical understanding of image-making processes – has already manifested itself in Nakayama’s case, which was proclaimed unsuitable for the

accepted paradigm of photographic veracity precisely because of the same

claim of the medium’s complex treatment of reality. A number of significant Surrealist publications appeared in Japan in 1940,

despite the escalation of demands on all sectors of society to contribute to the war efforts: the Mesemu zoku and Hikari albums showed the results of close collaborations among members of the clubs in Osaka and Nagoya in the previous years, whereas Irf 1, the only volume of the Fukuoka club’s magazine, was published in April. However, all of them signalled a reaching of dead ends, rather than an opening of new strands for development. There was little commentary on Hikari in the press and the state police monitored Tanpei’s meetings in Osaka.55 Mesemu zoku was published after more than a year and only by denouncing Surrealism under the banner of ‘plasticity’, which metamorphosed in the meantime so as to include the alleged cultural exchange with photographers from the occupied territories, as well as the photographic treatment of traditional aesthetics put forward in a coordination between the Nagoya and Fukuoka clubs. Moreover, following the signing of the Tripartite Pact between Italy, Germany

and Japan in Berlin in September 1940, a definite turn in editorial policies took place in all of the photographic magazines, with Photo Times and Kamera kurabu running simultaneous militarist propaganda features in October 1940 – an expanded version of ‘Introducing Deutchland’ already seen in the former in April 1938 and a four-page-long ‘Hitler and Children’, with the subtitle reading ‘Hitler Knows the Power and Fear of Photography’, in the latter.56 This turn announced the integration of the photographic magazines into a joint photojournalist outlet in December 1940 but just ahead of this event Takiguchi was given one last chance to explain the word ‘plasticity’ in the November 1940 issue of Photo Times.57 In the article, Takiguchi elaborates at length photography’s historical relationship to painting and reassesses plasticity as a feature that integrates the medium’s artistic aspiration with its mechanical, documentary nature (kirokusei).58 In terms of his previous claim that plasticity is also related to fantasy, Takiguchi does not disavow the relationship with Surrealism. However, this time, he says that although it would be smart to criticize Surrealism under the present circumstances, he believes that, depending on how it is used, it can be ‘a superior tool of expression’.59 Although this type of art is denounced in Germany, he writes, we should remember that it is being reinstituted in Italy, as both an art of state propaganda (kokka senden geijutsu) and a decorative art form. Not only that but with its ability to astonish, its wit and humour, Takiguchi adds, it is in essence a similarly refined practice to that of documentary photography.60 Whereas even Takiguchi is forced to explain the word ‘plasticity’ in terms related

to the countries of the Tripartite Pact towards the end of 1940 – and assert the superiority of photojournalism over Surrealist photography while doing so – it was Sakata’s elaboration of this practice that was later criticized for its assumed support of nationalist state propaganda. Namely, the change of the Nagoya club’s name in November 1939, reflected in the shift towards abstract photographs inspired by

traditional aesthetics, was famously a point of disagreement between Sakata and

Yamamoto, with the latter deciding to leave the club as a result. In a later recollection of their last meeting, Yamamoto explained this decision to have been prompted by Sakata’s proposal to combine ‘nationalism’ with ‘innovative photography’.61 From the perspective of this recollection, the shift towards traditional aesthetics was later understood as nationalist.62 Given the terminology through which this shift was elaborated in Photo Times, such an understanding is not surprising. However, in view of the photographs produced in close collaboration between different members of the clubs in Nagoya and Fukuoka, and in view of Yamanaka’s support to the project, it becomes clear that the turn towards locality and traditional aesthetics resulted from a complex situation in which Surrealist photography found itself in Japan in late 1939 and early 1940, within not only a silenced and oppressive but also increasingly precarious and dangerous political climate. The idea of an ‘artistic sensibility of indigenous Japanese culture’ was developed

in the stable period between 1932 and 1937, simultaneously to the process of ‘conversion’ or reintegration of the left-wing writers into a seemingly depoliticized intellectual climate.63 However, as Sandra Wilson argues, ethnic nationalism – or the understanding of nation according to ethnic identity – was remarkably flexible in Japan and did not always support state priorities.64 Despite its ostensible similarity with this idea, no significant space was further allowed for Sakata’s practice in Photo Times after the coordinated submissions in January 1940. Sakata’s absence from the magazine was partially bridged by a series of articles focusing on what he termed to be ‘prominent Japanese photographers’ – Shimozato in January, Tajima in March, Watanabe in June and Yamamoto in July – mainly promoting the work of Surrealist photographers from Nagoya. Instead, the magazine extensively published Abe’s photographs from the ‘continent’ in January, February and May whereas Yamanaka’s text, appearing after two single submissions by Fukuoka photographers in the June and July issues, was a rare exception. His construction of the argument through the celebration of Japanese traditional design should be understood as an attempt to explain Sakata’s recent practice in acceptable terms. Importantly, at the point of the January 1940 issue of Photo Times, in which the shift towards traditional aesthetics reached its peak, all the photographs produced in the project do not manifest an enthusiastic view of ‘Japaneseness’, or a celebration of locality, but show abstract renditions of placeless, ruptured and ruined textures. In other words, if Sakata’s change of heart was genuine and not strategic, it did not manifest as such before mid-1940.

Everyday life Simultaneously to Yamanaka’s article in July 1940, Sakata published ‘A New Pair

of Straw Sandals’, and this text represents well the stakes involved in his work at the time.65 Here, Sakata writes about his recent practice by comparing himself

to a character from Leo Tolstoy’s How Much Land Does a Man Need? (1886).

He admits his fascination with foreign modernist art and particularly Surrealism but ascribes it to his youthful enthusiasm and concludes that he is in need of a new pair of straw sandals (waraji).66 He partly reasserts the value of the several hundred-year-old or several thousand-year-old Japanese cultural heritage, previously claimed by the Société Irf as better-suited grounds for Surrealism in the country. However, this heritage is put in a direct relationship to Neo-Plasticism: Van Doesburg and Mondrian, Sakata writes, searched for ‘the geometrical regularity of beauty’s manifestation in space’ in their work, but the same principles are deeply rooted in the organization of Japanese daily lives and especially in the architecture of traditional farmhouses (minka).67 This situation does not lead him to embrace all of Japanese culture and dismiss all of the Western, he adds, but he would like to see the former more acknowledged in the latter, regardless of its lack of theory or salon-like environment to support it. Unlike for Yamanaka, plasticity in Japan is thus understood not in relation to art but as indivisible from everyday life, with photography described not as an art form but as a culturally valuable means of rendering such a life visible.68 After establishing this difference, towards the end Sakata finally proceeds to glorify the unique nature of Japanese culture, insisting that all photography – including documentary, commercial, artistic and plastic – should be put in service of that culture. Interpreted by Takeba as a ‘declaration of conversion’ (tenkō seimei) on the

part of Sakata, who was up until that point known as a ‘Surrealist warrior’ (shūrū no tōshi), the text adopts a format reminiscent of the interrogations by the socalled ‘thought police’, whereby he answers such questions as what has he learned from his interest in foreign modernist art and how can this knowledge be put in the service of Japanese culture.69 However, as Takeba also notes, his description of Japanese aesthetics as intrinsically modernist, and an attempt to find a solution to how the experience of modernism was not foreign and imported to Japan but has had its own historical trajectory, was not aligned with the nationalist celebration of traditional culture as unique and eternal: it neither promoted the militarist efforts on the front nor displayed a longing for a return to the past.70 The problem of modernity, as originating in the West, was an essential fault line in the nationalist programme that famously sought to ‘overcome’ it by reclaiming the value of Japanese traditional culture and ideals of pan-Asian beauty.71 Sakata elaborates the concept of beauty in substantial terms, quoting Aristotle, Plato, Hegel and Immanuel Kant in order to identify the problems it entails.72 Indeed, the main difference between the West and Japan that he highlights is the approach to aesthetics (bigaku). Whereas the West regards aesthetics scientifically Japan treats it intuitively, and this difference becomes accentuated in the experience of such modernist art forms as abstraction.73 It is this ‘scientific spirit’, Sakata concludes, that he chooses as his new pair of straw sandals.74

As Mizuno Hiromi aptly demonstrates, science was a distinct aporia of the

imperial, anti-Western ideology, so much so that by the late 1930s it was not considered a Western import but promoted on an unprecedented scale.75 As Mizuno also demonstrates, this view of science was utilized not only by the country’s technocrats in order to fuel the war machinery but also by Marxist writers, who adopted the ‘scientific’ approach so as to criticize imperial ideology and the military government in Japan. Marxism itself was considered a ‘scientific’ approach to social sciences, which it had dominated since the 1920s.76 We should recall here that Takiguchi also expresses a preference for ‘scientific’ understanding of Blossfeldt’s photographs in his review of Mesemu zoku in 1940, and he makes sure to repeat this particular preference in his re-examination of the relationship between photography and plasticity in the November 1940 article. 77 Sakata’s adopting of this particular approach, therefore, reads as little more than an alignment with Takiguchi in a return to the resonance of the word zōkei in 1920s Japan for socially engaged practices interested in everyday life, and a departure from both his earlier, more radical experiments with the material properties of Surrealist object-images as well as from Yamanaka’s reading of plasticity as situated outside of the ‘flow’ of life. If we speculate whether Sakata actually wished not to celebrate but to undermine ‘nationalism’ with his ‘scientific’ approach to ‘innovative’ photography, Yamamoto’s leaving of the Nagoya club for fear of further interrogation at the moment when the ‘thought police’ had already put a ban on his own Surrealist magazine would be understandable, especially given that Takiguchi’s own ‘conversion’ in November 1940 did not prevent his arrest in the following year.78 The fact that Sakata used the particular phrasing for formulation of his project could even attest to this ambition. Regardless of its theoretical premise, Sakata’s apparent ‘conversion’,

ultimately, enabled the appearance of his only book in January 1941, titledShashin no zōkei bunka e no hōshi, Zōkei shashin no seikaku (Photography in the Service of Plastic Culture, Characteristics of Plastic Photography) and included in a longrunning series of photographic titles put together by the publisher Arusu.79 The small-sized publication is just over seventy pages long and contains Sakata’s text that is very close to ‘A New Pair of Straw Sandals’. He discusses such topics as the origin of the word ‘plasticism’, the relationship between ‘plastic culture’ and photography and what ‘photo-plastic’ stands for across twelve chapters. Again, Sakata makes a direct link to Neo-Plasticism, which influenced such groups in Japan as the New Plasticity and the Free Artists’ Association.80 However, he also refers to H. G. Wells’s ‘The Limits of Individual Plasticity’ (1895) so as to establish the long history of the word and its relationship to everyday life.81 Offering a thorough overview of photography’s history, he repeats the importance of the medium’s ability to render plasticity two-dimensionally and thus materialize its cultural value.82 He again formulates the problem of aesthetics philosophically, in reference to an even longer list of sources – this time also including Herbert

Figure 6.7 Sakata Minoru, Zōkei shashin, ARS, 1941, cover page, courtesy of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum © Sakata Takashi. Spencer, Georgi Plekhanov and Richard Kuhn – and charts the development of

modernist art, including Surrealism.83 The main outlets of Surrealist art in Japan, Sakata claims, are Minotaure magazine and the Art and Culture Association, whereas in terms of photography it is practised by the Société Irf and can be seen in Mesemu zoku.84 Surrealism in this scheme remains attached to art, whereas Sakata insists on the cultural value of zōkei shashin as a decidedly non-artistic means of materializing the experience of everyday life. However, the basis for such a development of ‘plastic’ photography is elaborated through Marxist theory, in reference to Karl Marx himself and Plekhanov, whose ‘Art and Social Life’ (1912) was one of the few texts by Soviet theorists translated into Japanese (in 1928) and refused the separation of art and life. 85 Not only that but, furthermore, all photographs that accompany the text come from those outlets that Sakata identify as Surrealist. The publication comprises thirty-three photographs, twenty-five of which are

published across full pages, resembling a photobook. A substantial number of these is produced by Sakata, who is most likely behind some fifteen or so signed and unsigned images, most of which were already published previously: they include Four, all of the photographs from Yamanaka’s ‘Occasional Thoughts’ as well as a variation of Leaf, which is seen on the cover page (Figure 6.7). All the main photographers from Nagoya and Fukuoka – Hisano, Inagaki, Konomi,

Shimozato and Tajima – are prominently represented in the publication, alongside

some members of the Naniwa club such as Hattori Yoshifumi, as well as several Tokyo-based photographers such as Abe. Again, most of their photographs had already been published elsewhere, including several examples seen in the January 1940 issue of Photo Times, and focus mostly on abstract renditions of everyday and common-use objects. For instance, Shimozato’s Garments (Fukusō ni tsuite) was previously seen in Sakata’s article for Photo Times in January 1940, and this time offers a wider shot of a kimono dress from which it is cropped (Figure 6.8). Tajima’s Dishcloth Embroidery (Zōkin no nuitori) and Piles of Folded Newspapers (Tsumi kasanerareta shinbunshi) also show close-up and abstract renditions of everyday objects (Figure 6.9). If we recall here Shimozato’s statement from Mesemu zoku, Sakata’s

book ostensibly continues with the means of evading censorship among Surrealist photographers in 1930s Japan at least since 1937. The publication of primarily Surrealist photographs should be perceived as its chief goal, while the accompanying text codes a socialist treatment of everyday life through the adoption of a ‘scientific’ approach to photography. The images continue with the use of such photographic tools essential to zōkei shashin as close-up in order to isolate details of creased or even ruptured surfaces – of a leaf, a newspaper or a piece of textile. By playing with entropy, they reveal the inevitable obsoleteness of materials, and therefore of cultures or traditions, in time and therefore probe a

Figure 6.8 Shimozato Yoshio, Garments, Zōkei shashin, ARS, 1941, pages 62–63, courtesy of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum © Shimozato Masao.

Figure 6.9 Tajima Tsugio, Dishcloth Embroidery and Piles of Folded Newspapers, Zōkei shashin, ARS, 1941, pages 59–60, courtesy of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum © Tajima Shōzō.

reversal of the idealist view of modernist progress. Harry Harootunian describes

this desire for reuniting art and everyday life in Japan of that time as ‘an elusive fantasy’ and claims that it constituted a ‘shared ground’ for modernism and fascism.86 Sakata’s final Surrealist project in the 1930s Japan, therefore, reclaims photography from the space of art for art’s sake and places it at the centre of contemporary philosophical debates concerning the very possibility of politically or socially engaged artistic representation in that particular moment in time.

Disconnection All of the photographs from the coordinated efforts to come up with a feasible

practice in a political, intellectual and cultural impasse in Japan at the end of the 1930s fell into historical oblivion. In turn, some of Yamamoto’s photographs produced after separating from the Nagoya club are considered as the finest example of Surrealist photography produced during the decade. Two of these photographs were published in the second issue of Kōkaku in August 1940. The magazine, published in two issues only, was an outlet of the Independent Photography Research Association (Dokuritsu Shashin Kenkyūkai) to which Yamamoto belonged and was a salon-style publication without a clear ideological

focus. Titled together as Birdcage at a Buddhist Temple (Garan no torikago),

they show a sequence of two images and were submitted together with a poem Buddhist Legend (Garan no densetsu) (Figures 6.10a and 6.10b).87 In the first, a telephone receiver is placed within a bird’s cage, whereas in the second it is seen outside of the cage. As such, they were previously interpreted through the highly evocative symbolic potential of the birdcage motif and through its title that suggests a critique of traditional cultural heritage.88 However, although those two photographs certainly offer a critique of the silencing of critical thought, they should not be viewed in isolation from a discussion developing with regard to the subversive potential of the Surrealist object and the popularity of Dalí’s painting in 1930s Japan. Yamamoto returns to the motif of a disconnected telephone receiver in the October 1940 issue of VOU magazine, this time placing it upon a plate seen on a staircase in front of a sea in Landscape (Fūkei), an image accompanying his article ‘A Concise Vilification with Regard to Photography’ (Figure 6.11).89 In the article, Yamamoto describes the mechanical process of photographing

in the following manner: ‘When the camera shutter is released, all things within a chosen angle fly into a fixed mask.’ 90 To Yamamoto, therefore, the birdcage seen in the previously published images can equally stand for his view of photography, to which all things ‘fly into’ (tobikomu) once the camera shutter is released. For Yamamoto, photography is defined by the pursuit of a specific materiality (busshitsu) in relation to objects photographed (buttai).91 The ‘search for the object’ is what qualifies the recent practice, developing a new perception through the forging of ‘new correlations between objects’ that ‘symbolize living content’.92 The use of symbolic properties of everyday life is thus Yamamoto’s reflection on or contribution to the debate on the Surrealist object. The ‘materiality’ resonates with the view of photography as a ‘plastic’ art practice, the ‘new correlations’ evoke Surrealist poetic juxtapositions whereas the ‘living content’ is evocative of the ‘psychologically’ imbued work by his previous club co-members at the Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde. The specific choice of objects in the accompanying photograph is also reflective of such an articulation of the debate and is accentuated by the symbolic value invested in a disconnected telephone receiver. Dalí used the motif, symbolizing failed negotiations between the British

prime minister Neville Chamberlain and Hitler in September 1938, in a series of paintings produced in 1938 and 1939, including Mountain Lake (1938), The Sublime Moment (1938) and Enigma of Hitler (1939). Takiguchi published three simultaneous articles on the occasion of Dalí’s exhibition at Julien Levy’s gallery in New York in 1939 in July of the same year, making it difficult for anyone in art and photography circles in Japan not to be aware of his work. In ‘Dali’s Recent Activities’ published in Mizue, Takiguchi reports how twenty-one of Dalí’s exhibited twenty-seven paintings were sold during the two weeks of the show, including The Sublime Moment.93 In this article, Takiguchi explains how the

Figure 6.10a Yamamoto Kansuke,

Birdcage at a Buddhist Temple, 1940

© Yamamoto Toshio.

Figure 6.10b Yamamoto Kansuke, Untitled

(variant of Birdcage at a Buddhist Temple), 1940, Nagoya City Art Museum © Yamamoto Toshio.

Figure 6.11 Yamamoto Kansuke, Landscape, 1940 © Yamamoto Toshio.

telephone receiver motif is often repeated in Dalí’s recent work and how The

Sublime Moment manages to capture a ‘dangerous’ moment of suspension in which the object appears as if it were about to crash on a plate of fried eggs seen beneath, but does not comment on its political connotations.94 In ‘Two Portraits’, published in Photo Times, Takiguchi extends his writing about Dalí’s recent success in America, commenting on two profiles of the artist published in Harper’s Bazaar and Life magazines.95 He explains how an image accompanying the Harper’s Bazaar article and produced by George Hoyningen-Huene is a photomontage combining a portrait of Dalí and Gala with a reproduction of The Sublime Moment, but refrains from any further comment on the motif of a disconnected phone receiver. The political investment of Dalí’s painting is only mentioned in the third article, published in Serupan in the same month, and titled ‘Dalí Goes to America’. 96 In this text, Takiguchi speculates how the latest move of the European artists to America might be purely economically motivated but insists that it will have a significant impact on the country’s art scene.97 He comments on Enigma of Hitler, a painting showing a disconnected telephone receiver in the same precarious position above a plate that also includes a photographic portrait of Hitler, saying that Dalí’s political standing changed after his move to the United States. He claims that it cannot be compared to the better-achieved works of the type, such as George Grosz’s, and adds how Dalí’s New York audiences won’t have any understanding for his political views.98 The potential and meaning of the disconnected telephone receiver, therefore,

must have been well known to Yamamoto prior to its inclusion in all three later photographs. As the last image from the series appears in the issue of the magazine in which the editorial was required to proclaim its formal support for the war effort in an introductory note, it certainly criticized political oppression.99 However, Landscape can also be read as symbolizing the disconnection from any form of communication or action with and within the international Surrealist orbit in Japan in 1940. Although Takiguchi notes the emigration of European artists to the United States he does not reflect on the fact that it was led by Nazi Germany’s militarist expansion. His commentary on Dalí’s political position visà-vis his emigration to the United States, however, shows a clear knowledge of the tension between Breton and Dalí that resulted in the expelling of Dalí from the Surrealist group, during which time Breton nicknamed Dalí ‘Avida Dollars’ for his commercial success in the United States. That the expulsion also resulted from Dalí’s view of fascist iconography as prone to irony should also be taken into account when thinking about a seemingly simple ‘coupling’ of photography with nationalism in the practice contributed to by Sakata, other Nagoya-based photographers and members of the Société Irf.100 Whereas their coordinated effort to continue their Surrealist work in relation to traditional aesthetics was later dismissed as nationalistic, Yamamoto’s direct referencing of a similarly unorthodox iconography of Dalí’s painting in 1938 and 1939 was celebrated

as quintessentially Surrealist. Both projects appear in ambiguous contexts, the

former echoing ethnic nationalism and the latter appearing in a volume directly voicing its support for the war effort. By the summer of 1939, the French Surrealist group was reduced to the

smallest number of poets and artists in its, by then, fifteen-year-long history. As Nazi Germany was invading country after country, little activity resulted from this reduced circle and Breton’s long expected Anthologie de l’humour noir came out on 10 June 1940, the same day that the French government fled Paris. 101 Unlike European Surrealists, many of whom emigrated from France prior to the onset of the Pacific War, the Japanese did not have the same choice. Those Surrealist artists living in Paris, such as Fujita and Okamoto, were brought back home and enlisted in the service of Japanese military operations, similar to the most prominent Surrealist photographers, among whom Abe was sent to the Philippines and Sakata to Java. Japanese Surrealists such as Fukuzawa and Takiguchi were prosecuted and arrested throughout 1941, in advance of the attacks on Pearl Harbor, within the final phase of the state’s repression of the cultural sphere.102 Those Japanese nationals who refused to go back to Japan in the aftermath of the attack were put in camps in the United States.103 Although some instances of Surrealist photographic activity can be identified after the release of Sakata’s book, the year marked an almost definitive halt to its practice in prewar Japan. Most of the practitioners and theorists of key importance to Surrealist

photography in 1930s Japan, in one way or another, underwent ‘conversion’ in 1940. Abe admitted his exposure to nationalist ideology during his visit to Manchukuo, Takiguchi elaborated Surrealism in an explicit relation to state propaganda, Sakata invested efforts into the elaboration of a practice that takes up as its focus the everyday life simultaneously claimed by nationalist propaganda and is supported by Yamanaka and other Surrealist photographers in Nagoya and Fukuoka, whereas Yamamoto published his work in a magazine that declared its support to the war efforts. After receiving criticism for his lyrical and artistic style, even Nakayama took the ‘tour’ of the ‘continent’ in the same year.104 As Michael Lucken explains it, numerous individuals underwent this process of ‘conversion’ – a unique strategy of Japanese policing – both following imprisonment or spontaneously, and almost nobody managed to elude it, not least due to what he terms as ‘virtually no possibility of exile’.105 Even those artists who refused to endorse the state, such as Ei-Kyū, could not make it through the war without contributing to the enforced collective efforts to support it.106 What becomes of primary importance in this situation, as Mizuno claims, is

how the process of ‘conversion’ is understood in terms of citizenship: by the very fact that Surrealist critics and photographers wrote and published works during wartime, or in 1930s Japan, means that they were doing so under strong

censorship rules, which not only limited but also created a specific type of

discourse. As she puts it: Only by being part of the discourse could one participate in changing and

challenging the dominant ideology; at the same time, however, participating in discourse as praxis of resistance requires utilizing accepted rules and languages to make one’s message comprehensible to the listener or to simply avoid censorship.107 The many permutations of Surrealist photography in 1930s Japan should be

understood precisely as an example of artistic negotiations with a discourse primarily formulated by an oppressive political climate. Whereas shinkō shashin led the way for the institutional acceptance of photography as an artistic practice when it was only just emerging as a medium of importance in Surrealist circles, this achievement came at the cost of divorcing its Surrealist origin from text. As a result, zen’ei shashin mobilized the image itself as a tool for awakening the viewership within its depoliticized understanding of avant-garde and with regard to a burgeoning discussion about the properties of Surrealist photography in Japan. In zōkei shashin, however, the same strategies – of aligning with art and relying on the image – became insufficient. On the one hand, how problematic the entanglement with fascist rhetoric that resulted from a desire to continue with work even under the conditions of outmost political crisis, arguably, only becomes clear in retrospect. On the other hand, if we assume that this desire also involved a deliberate intent of political transgression, it mirrors the problems of articulating the relationship between politics and aesthetics outside of binary oppositions. In both cases, the final collapse of Surrealist photography only took place in Japan in 1941, after versatile and often collaborative efforts had been invested in this practice for a full decade. Wrestling with a number of impossibilities – including marginalization, state censorship, surveillance and forced processes of political conversion – these efforts resulted in a rich and yet to be fully acknowledged body of work and produced an authentic and possibly unique discussion about the nature of Surrealist photography.

CONCLUSION Following Japan's defeat in the Second World War, the liberal atmosphere fostered

by the US General Headquarters, the body in charge of the Allied occupation of the country (1945–1952), held great promise for all forms of artistic practice. However, this promise was quickly caught up in the oppressive internal politics surrounding the Korean War (1950–1953). In their reforms of Japanese society and government, the occupying forces compromised the grounding principles of liberal democracy by purging the public sector of Communist Party members and by censoring and preventing leftist activity in Japan. Although peace and freedom were essential components of the new Japanese constitution, promulgated in 1947, the revived interest in the prewar avant-gardes in the early years after the war was once again subject to surveillance. The signing of the controversial US-Japan Security Treaty (Anpo) in 1951 secured economic recovery and prosperity for the country and affirmed its relevance as a strategic point for the Western Bloc in the Cold War. The 1950s were, nevertheless, marked by intellectual pessimism and passive nihilism as the recovery came at the cost of the continuous presence of US troops on Japan’s territory.1 Notwithstanding a definitive rupture with the past brought about by the

massive destruction of urban centres during the war, the sociopolitical climate framing the emergence of Japanese postwar art was not entirely dissimilar to the one dominating the prewar period.2 In such a climate, it was realism that flourished in the immediate aftermath of the war. The same photojournalist photographers who first came to prominence during the 1930s became the leading figures in this course of development, most notably Domon and Kimura, following on from their engagements on illustrated propaganda magazines such as Front during the war years. The realist approach to photography that characterizes their work is often considered a natural consequence of the shock imposed on the eye by the overpowering horror of nuclear destruction. 3 In addition, it was an essential part of the ‘realism debate’ (riarizumu ronsō), a major discourse unfolding in the aftermath of the war that culminated around 1954 after almost a decade of complete domination of the field.4 As a consequence, although many individuals of key importance to Surrealist photography in 1930s Japan resumed their activities after 1945, they did

SURREALISM AND PHOTOGRAPHY IN 1930s JAPAN so in an atmosphere that definitively favoured professional over amateur or

photojournalist over artistic strands of practice. There was no single channel to communicate the achievements of Surrealist

photography of the 1930s after the war. A substantial proportion of negatives and original prints were lost in the flames of Allied bombings, rendering a straightforward continuity of work next to impossible. Moreover, as such photo magazines as Photo Times stopped running in 1940, there were no significant outlets for publishing progressive photography, not least due to shortages of necessary supplies. After realist photography started to decline in the mid-1950s, the only focused attempt to reformulate the importance of alternative approaches to the medium was the appearance of subjective photography (shukanshugi shashin), a brief reaction to Otto Steinert’s subjektive fotografie, first formulated in Germany in 1951. Following a feature in Kamera that introduced this international photographic movement in Japan in 1954, the Japan Subjective Photography League (Nihon Shukanshugi Shashin Remmei) was established in May 1956, including such doyens of the prewar avant-garde scene as Abe and Takiguchi. Dai-ikkai Kokusai Shukanshugi Shashin ten (The First International Subjective Photography Exhibition), held in December of the same year and curated by Steinert, showed seminal prewar Surrealist photographers like Yamamoto alongside the emerging artists such as Ōtsuji Kiyoji.5 However, this attempt to rearticulate avant-garde photography in the 1950s

was short-lived and, as Fujimura Satomi notes, never achieved its prewar proportions.6 By the end of the decade, a new generation of photographers gathering around the VIVO agency (1957–1961) – including Kawada Kikuji, Hosoe Eikō and Tōmatsu Shōmei – started to write a new chapter in the history of Japanese photography, one based on the hybrid inheritance of both realism and subjectivism. By the time of the seminal exhibition titled Shashin hyaku nen: Nihonjin ni yoru shashin hyōgen no rekishi ten (A Century of Photography: The Exhibition of Japanese Photographic Expression) – the first attempt to systematize the history of photography in Japan put together by the Japan Professional Photographers Society in 1968 – the knowledge of Surrealist photography in 1930s Japan was reduced to isolated examples of almost no consequence.7 Regardless of significant achievements during the 1930s, photography

was still relatively unacknowledged as a fine arts practice during the 1950s. Nevertheless, it was mainly in this field that the major issues of importance to Surrealist photography in the 1930s continued to unfold after the war, with many avant-garde groups resuming their prewar activities under the new circumstances of the Cold War era. The reorganization of avant-garde art rather than photography only in 1950s Japan is thus of essential importance for the concluding remarks about Surrealist photography in the 1930s. In what follows, we shall observe how some of the main discursive issues of prominence during

CONCLUSION the 1950s – such as the relevance of mass media and the continued interests

in materiality – can help us get the final grasp of the chief strands of Surrealist photography in 1930s Japan. In addition to the similarities between the prewar and postwar periods outlined above – in the sociopolitical climate, the fracturing of the photographic practice and the renewed activities of avant-garde art – Surrealism in Japan also remained dispersed. Reformulating within a drastically changing world but still outside of a single group and in an oppressive political climate, it was increasingly becoming distant to the new generation of artists who were articulating their own priorities. Therefore, we shall also observe how during the 1960s many Surrealist ideas became central to the new set of artistic practices while partly dissolving into a historical cultural praxis of chiefly academic interest. ***

The impossibility of isolating Japanese postwar art from a lineage of the historical

avant-gardes established in the country since the turn of the twentieth century has been affirmed by a number of authors, and the role that photography played in this lineage is equally important to note. As Mitsuda recently argued, the cross-pollination between art and photography that took place in 1930s Japan, after Surrealism was introduced in the country, prefigured the experiments of the 1960s and 1970s, and thus anticipated the interdisciplinary practices that followed them to the present day.8 Elsewhere, Mitsuda claims that what we now call contemporary art (gendai bijutsu) developed in Japan in the decade immediately following the country’s surrender, between 1945 and 1955, through the activities of the prewar avant-garde artists and their education of a new generation. 9 Similar to the restructuring of the national arts institutions (museums and governmental bodies supporting the arts), postwar avant-garde groups underwent significant reforms in this period, adopting more open types of research-based organizations and developing new forms of collaborative art production. The Japanese Avant-Garde Artists’ Club (Nihon Avangyarudo Bijutsuka Kurabu), established in 1947 and enlisting such prominent prewar artists and critics as Abe, Hasegawa, Okamoto and Takiguchi, was one such group, with the education of younger members as its major goal. The emergence of new artistic collectives with an essential importance to postwar art in Japan during the 1950s – the Experimental Workshop (Jikken Kōbō, 1951–1958) and the Gutai Art Association (Gutai Bijutsu Kyōkai, 1954–1972) – was the materialization of these efforts.10 The Experimental Workshop, an art collective known for its multimedia

collaborations, is especially relevant to the alternative forms of photographic practice during the 1950s. In the eighteen projects presented to the public, the collective mobilized different sets of individuals in the production of varied works, abandoning the traditional exhibition format for a more open system of

presentations. Tezuka’s scholarship on the Experimental Workshop has shown

how under Takiguchi’s guidance it appropriated the legacy of Bauhaus, a subject of Takiguchi’s interest in the 1930s.11 Apart from Takiguchi, the godfather of the workshop’s name who acted as a source of knowledge about the prewar avant-gardes, another link with Surrealist photography of the 1930s can be observed in Ōtsuji’s position as the group’s chief photographer, documenting its main activities while simultaneously making his own artistic contribution to the collective. He developed an interest in Surrealism while he was a high school student, acquiring volumes of Photo Times in a second-hand bookshop. 12 The meaning of the photographic avant-garde was thus mediated to him directly through the discussions publicized in the magazine and served as a model for his thinking about the medium. In the immediate aftermath of the war, Ōtsuji pursued his interest in the prewar

avant-garde as a member of the photography section of the Art and Culture Association from 1949 to 1952. The group continued its focus on Surrealist and abstract art as it had when it was first formed in 1939 and offered him a platform for experiments in these fields.13 He was introduced to the group by Saitō, an abstract painter and a sculptor active in the prewar avant-garde circles as one of the founders of the Room Nine Society, with whom Ōtsuji shared a studio space for over two years. Through the activities of the group he also met Abe, who assumed the name of Abe Nobuya after the war and helped Ōtsuji understand a difference between the view of avant-garde as a style, a subject of much criticism at the time, and as a diverse and diversifying practice offering a means for constructing unorthodox and fresh ways for engaging with the world. Following the encounter, Abe and Ōtsuji produced a collaborative work in 1950, which was published in magazines and exhibited at group shows in the following years.14 Unlike much contemporary photography that was preoccupied with socially engaged realism, the project constructed a suggestive image space inviting multiple interpretations. In January 1953, the editor of Asahi Picture News (Asahi gurafu) Iizawa

Tadasu started publishing photographs of sculptural objects produced by the members of the Experimental Workshop – including Kitadai Shōzō and Yamaguchi Katsuhiro – in the APN column, on Takiguchi’s recommendation. The photographs were mostly taken by Ōtsuji and the collaboration resulted in his joining the group, again on Takiguchi’s recommendation. The collaborative project for the APN column was considered radically experimental. As photographs were both records of the assembled objects and the medium for which they were constructed, the event of photographing was perceived as an intrinsic part of the artistic gesture in the feature, which paved the way for the recognition of photography as a significant art form to the group, consisting mostly of painters, poets and music composers. For Yamaguchi, a founding member of the collective together with Kitadai and Takiguchi, it

meant ‘the addition of Constructivist photography and Surrealist fantasy to

the workshop’s productive arsenal’, integrating Ōtsuji’s interest in Surrealist photography of the 1930s.15 The APN column had a significant impact on the group’s fifth event and led to the inclusion of photography in the presentation, together with abstract oil painting and experimentations with new materials and movement. Production of the column, running for fifty-five issues between 1953 and

1954, involved numerous artists from outside of the group, including prewar avant-garde artists who experimented with photography in the 1930s such as Hasegawa and Hamada Hamao. 16 The column reflected a number of methodological similarities with Surrealist photography of the 1930s in its specific interest in and treatment of the Surrealist object or the construction of elaborate sculptural objects exclusively for the camera. Equally important, the use of the popular illustrated press for the dissemination of such images was also their shared characteristic. As Mizusawa Tsutomu asserts, the relation with the illustrated press was of key importance to the project, as the artists directed the scenes for the camera, conceiving the magazine page ‘much like a stage space’.17 Thus, it was not only the mediation of the Surrealist object and the renegotiation of its meaning through collaborative art processes characteristic of Surrealist photography in the 1930s that continued in the 1950s but also its active relationship with the illustrated press. The very character of the prewar ‘avant-garde’ photo clubs, as the spaces of research and collaboration that enlisted painters and critics alongside photographers, also translated into the work of the Experimental Workshop, as Mizusawa described the group to have been a ‘collection of amateurs’ from its inception, formed outside of formal arts education.18 The problem of tradition was another major topic preoccupying art discourse

in the first decade after the war, as it was severely criticized and seen as unfitting to contemporary art because of the war-years propaganda.19 Okamoto was among the prominent voices writing about the relevance of traditional arts in Japan whereas Hasegawa was widely influential for their restoration in contemporary practice, partly because of their popularity abroad.20 The Experimental Workshop, although better known for its early merging of art and technology, was not isolated from this reinstituted interest in Japanese tradition, most visibly redirected into the domain of sculpture in the postwar period.21 The ostensible continuation of the prewar importance of the Surrealist object attested by the APN column had its theoretical grounding in Takiguchi’s prewar writing. His Gendai geijutsu (Modern Art), a seminal three-part title that encompassed essays on Cubism, Surrealism, sculpture and photography first published in 1938, was reprinted in 1949 and 1951, exercising significant influence on the emerging critics in the postwar period such as Hanada Kiyoteru. Hanada’s Avangyarudo geijutsu (Avant-Garde Art, 1954), expanding on Surrealist ideas of

materiality, was widely read among the young generation of artists and was not

unrelated to the simultaneous interest in the same ideas within Gutai.22 A key feature of Japanese art discourse of the 1950s, the interest in materiality

originated in the 1930s and continued in the 1960s through the vanguard practices of Anti-Art (Han-geijutsu), with Akasegawa Genpei’s famous 1000 Yen Note Incident (Sen-en satsu saiban) in which the artist printed a one-sided replica of the 1000 yen note and was subsequently investigated and prosecuted for forgery as a prominent example. During the 1960s Japanese artists made extensive use of the Surrealist object, which by that time evolved into a full-blown category of contemporary art – designated by the loanword obuje – but still based on the same premise of isolating a ready-made or a natural object from its everyday use and presenting it in a different context, as developed in Japan in Surrealist photography of the 1930s.23 The interest in materiality culminated in the Ningen to busshitsu (Between Man and Matter) exhibition held at the tenth Tokyo Biennale in 1970 and curated by the critic Nakahara Yūsuke. As Reiko Tomii claims, the show managed to put Tokyo on the map of international art for the first time in postwar Japan. 24 However, by the same moment in time the framework of contemporary art had made the notion of avant-garde, associated with financial struggle ever since the prewar years, obsolete in the country, imposing a fissure with its modernist origins.25 Even within the framework of fine arts, therefore, the interest in or the acknowledgement of Surrealist photography of the 1930s gave way first to the internationalization of contemporary art, taking place between 1955 and 1964, and then to its commercialization in the following decade. ***

Takiguchi received the highest recognition for his continuous contributions to

Japanese art during the 1950s. In 1958, he travelled to Europe for the first time as a commissioner of the Japanese pavilion for the Venice Biennale and finally found his way to the apartment on rue Fontaine to meet Breton.26 Takiguchi’s curatorial efforts at that time were channelled through the Tokyo-based Takemiya Gallery that commissioned him to recommend new and unknown talent, offering the artists exhibition space for a period of ten days from 1951 onwards.27 During the following six years, in which around 200 individuals had solo exhibitions, some of Takiguchi’s recommended artists reflected his Surrealist background, and one of them was Okanoue Toshiko. A design student still in her twenties, Okanoue experimented with fantasy, assembling collages from the material sourced in foreign illustrated magazines, without much knowledge of Surrealism. After meeting Takiguchi in 1952 and after he introduced her to the work of Ernst, Okanoue had two solo exhibitions at Takemiya, in 1953 and 1956, and took part in Chūshō to Gensō: Hi-shajitsu kaiga o dō rikai suru ka (Abstraction and Fantasy: How to Understand Non-Figurative Painting), an exhibition held at the newly

opened National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, in 1953–1954. Rediscovered

in the 1990s, her work attests to an interest primarily in the representation of identity and evokes strongly Ei-Kyū’s collages while drawing attention to the absence of women artists from Surrealist photography circles in the 1930s. Although Yamazawa Eiko opened her photographic studio in Osaka as early as in 1930, women rarely assumed the roles of professional photographers in Japan during the decade.28 A number of Surrealist photographers and critics took part in a debate published in the special issue that Photo Times dedicated to women photographers in April 1940, which also included an article that Takiguchi wrote about Maar.29 The magazine issue evidences not only the knowledge of but also an interest in the work by women Surrealist photographers in 1930s Japan and implies a readiness to support it. However, broader organizational structures of art institutions and social prejudice made equal participation of women artists in avant-garde arts in the country, before and after the war, just about impossible.30 Ei-Kyū also resumed his activities during the 1950s in the Democrat Artists

Association (Demokurāto Bijutsuka Kyōkai), a collective that he established in 1951. The artists taking part in the Democrat sometimes also exhibited at Takemiya (including Ei-Kyū), which operated as a creative hub for experimental art forms during the time of Takiguchi’s curatorship. It hosted solo exhibitions for some of the best achieved Japanese artists of the twentieth century, such as Kawara On in 1954 and Kusama Yayoi in 1955. Taking photographs of these artists’ works was the first professional assignment of Hosoe, a member of the Democrat in the early 1950s together with Kawara whose work was to become similarly well known. However, whereas his formative years were indebted to the work of prewar Surrealists such as Ei- Kyū and Takiguchi, most of his projects in the 1960s – including the photobooks Otoko to Onna (Man and Woman, 1961), Barakei (Ordeal by Roses, 1963) and Kamaitachi (1968) – were developed alongside the dancer Hijikata Tatsumi and the writer Mishima Yukio, who were also close friends and collaborators of the literary scholar and writer Shibusawa Tatsuhiko. These projects were underpinned with a darker and often highly symbolical angle that drew from traditional folklore and mythology while rendering unorthodox and often highly eroticized representations of the body. There is not much doubt that Surrealism occupied a significant presence in the

Japanese art world of the 1950s and 1960s, informing such individual practices as Okanoue’s or Hosoe’s.31 However, its potency was simultaneously questioned in terms of the difference between what was perceived as the purely formalist character of Surrealist painting and the increasingly popular Art informel.32 This difference became particularly important in the 1960s, when Japanese avantgarde art came to its full bloom. Although its versatile and multimedia character cannot be subsumed under any singular historical avant-garde movement, Surrealism played a significant part in laying its grounds in the 1950s, in a direct continuation of its activities from the 1930s. As William Marotti shows, the rise of

radical arts practices in the 1960s, entangled with the continuous demonstrations

against the renewal of the US-Japan Security Treaty, was largely indebted to the theoretical sophistication of prewar Surrealists.33 As he stresses, a generation of new Surrealist scholars in postwar Japan were equally focused on translations of French literature as on the research of Japan’s own literary Surrealism during the 1930s.34 For example, Tone Yasunao, an avant-garde sound artist, wrote a thesis on Japanese literary Surrealism in the 1950s interviewing the leading poets such as Takiguchi. In his recollection, Takiguchi expressed the view during these interviews that before the war one of the chief preoccupations of the Japanese Surrealists was to ‘be as faithful as possible to Breton’s doctrine’ but admitted that this might have been a mistake.35 According to Marotti, Bataille’s untranslated texts were widely read and considered canonical, as much as those by Lautréamont.36 The question of Surrealism’s relevance for revolutionary art and politics in

1960s Japan was further complicated precisely by the evolution of Surrealism into a subject of academic study. This issue, by no means specific to Japan only, is considered as one of the main obstacles to the appropriate articulation of postwar Surrealism and can be observed through the introductions that Takiguchi wrote for the various editions of his Kindai geijutsu. In the original version of 1938, Takiguchi explains how the compilation of texts included in the volume consists of articles that he previously published in various magazines and how they partly reflect on the growing interest in the relationship between Surrealism and abstraction among young painters of the day.37 In the 1949 and 1951 editions, Takiguchi introduces the volume by saying that these essays were among the last outposts supporting the freedom of artistic expression, given the fast approaching fascist regulations (fasshizumuteki tōsei) that ensued thereafter.38 Whereas this clarification becomes of essential importance in the 1950s, it differs from what Takiguchi notes on the occasion of the volume’s publication in 1962. In this final edition he writes how Breton might still continue to exercise his influence on young poets and artists in France but that in the quarter century since the book was first published, Surrealism in Japan mostly became a topic of interest among academics specializing in French literature.39 Takiguchi’s activities and statements during the 1950s and 1960s thus appropriately point at some of the issues of central importance to the complex nature of postwar Surrealism. Whereas its seeming loss of potency vis-à-vis the success of individual Surrealist painters was accompanied by its concurrent assigning to the field of academic study, it still continued to inform a significant number of young artists and critics interested in both the radical forms of art and literature as well we as radical poilitics. The academization of Surrealist thought, articulated by Durozoi as a tension between the potential disappearance or diffusion of postwar Surrealism in the 1950s, is encapsulated in a comment made by Maurice Blanchot in ‘Reflections on Surrealism’ (1945): ‘No one belongs to this movement any more, and everyone feels he could have been part of it.’40

Breton returned to Paris from his exile in New York in 1946 and promptly

revived Surrealist activity, publishing a collective declaration titled Rupture inaugurale in advance of the exhibition Le Surrealisme en 1947, taking place at the Galerie Maeght. Both the declaration and the exhibition not only marked the return of Surrealism but also responded to the criticism of its continuous rejection to commit to the political programme of the Communist Party and, by implication, its irrelevance in postwar France. Opting for independence from any political organization, these activities warranted Surrealism’s commitment to the creation of ‘a new myth’ or the reactivation of the mythical imaginary world drawing from magic and occultism as an artistic and intellectual alternative to the political action.41 Another prominent public display of postwar Surrealist activity took place in the exhibition titled EROS (Exposition inteRnatiOnale du Surréalisme), which was mounted at the Gallery Cordier in Paris in 1959–1960 and revisited the importance of eroticism by placing it into a more inclusive but also esoteric and ritualistic context. These public presentations of postwar Surrealism had a significant response in Japan, mediated not only by Takiguchi but even more so by Shibusawa, one of those graduates from the prestigious French literature department at the Tokyo University that Takiguchi singled out as the new generation of Surrealist scholars in Japan. Shibusawa was the translator of Marquis de Sade’s L’Historie de Juliette,

ou les Prospérités du vice (1797–1801), which was published in Japanese in 1959. The following ‘Sade Trial’ lasted for a decade and both Shibusawa and the publisher were prosecuted for public obscenity.42 Although the trial evidences how even well into the 1960s Japanese censorship would still not tolerate translations of radical literature, it was nevertheless highly important to the artistic practice, including photography. As KuroDalaiJee’s scholarship on radical performance collectives of the 1960s shows, Shibusawa’s collections of essays – such as Revival of the Marquis de Sade (1959) and Notebook of Black Magic (1961) – were not only a major influence to young critics and writers but served as the chief source to the ‘ritual school’ (gishikiha), a diverse group of decidedly anti-institutional individuals and collectives such as the Zero Dimension (Zero Jigen) who operated within a discourse that was yet to become familiar with the Western framework of performance and are only just receiving recognition in the history of Japanese art.43 Some of these individuals and groups responded directly to the elements of EROS, discussed in detail in a special issue that Mizue dedicated to the exhibition in July 1960. For instance, at an event organized in December 1962 Hijikata pressed a hot iron on the chest of the performance artist Kazakura Shō in Execution Ceremony of Sade’s Will (Sado no Yuigon Shikkō shiki), re-enacting Jean Benoît’s performance of the same title, L’exécution du testament du Marquis de Sade, which was seen at EROS and celebrated the 145th anniversary of de Sade’s death by exactly the same act.44 In Japan, the artists of the ‘ritual school’ pursued these distinctly

Surrealist ideas of eroticism and occultism by also borrowing freely from the

obsolete entertainment practices of premodern Japan, complicating them with references to Esoteric Buddhism or kabuki theatre.45 Shibusawa offered an alternative to Takiguchi’s brand of Surrealism in postwar

Japan, with eroticism and occultism informing significantly the conceptual framework of the magazine Chi to bara. Taking its title from Roger Vadim’s horror film Blood and Roses (1961) the magazine ran for four issues between 1968 and 1970 with Shibusawa acting as the editor in chief for the first three issues. Chi to bara mixed translations of Surrealist writers like André Pieyre de Mandiargues and illustrated features focusing on Surrealist artists such as Bellmer and Clovis Trouille with texts on vampires and witches, commentary on popular cult icons of Marylyn Monroe fame and elaborate treatments of such themes as fetishism and masochism, including references to Japanese cultural and artistic traditions like ukiyo-e woodblock prints. The magazine integrated all forms of visual arts in its proto-Surrealist content, appealing prominently to a readership identifying with counter-culture. It also allocated a significant space to photography by mobilizing those photographers already associated with Surrealist circles like Hosoe but also Fukase Masahisa, Shinoyama Kishin and Yoshioka Yasuhiro, who were just starting to become recognized for their interest in radical portrayals of sexuality. The magazine also integrated Shibusawa’s informal collaborations, not only with Hijikata and Mishima but also with Nonaka Yuri, another female designer expressing interest in Surrealist collage during the 1950s similar to Okanoue.46 Both photographic tendencies developing in the 1950s that were recognized earlier – the inclusion of women artists interested in collage and photography in the dispersed Surrealist network in postwar Japan and the recognizable preoccupation with a highly eroticized and often symbolic performative experiments with the body bordering with ritualism – culminated in Chi to bara while also laying the foundations for a sensationalist approach to the naked body that would become an important characteristic of Japanese photography in the 1970s, as popularized in the work of Nobuyoshi Araki. Published not only after Breton’s death in 1966 but also simultaneously to the iconic Provoke – also running between 1968 and 1970 – Chi to bara is seldom accredited in the histories of Surrealism as well as Japanese photography and offers a significant point of reference for the reconsideration of their relationship in the postwar period. By December 1970, when the leading Japanese art magazine Bijutsu techō

dedicated a special issue to Surrealism, the movement became ubiquitous and impossible to articulate in singular terms. Iwaya Kunio, a Surrealist scholar and the translator of Patrick Waldeberg’s Surrealism (1962) into Japanese, quotes Blanchot’s previously referenced text precisely in such terms in the introductory feature.47 Whereas both authors are writing with France in mind, the condition also powerfully resonates with the situation in which Surrealism found itself

in Japan by the end of the 1960s. Many Surrealist ideas were central to the

postwar avant-garde art in the country, extending beyond but also including photography. Moreover, a new generation of Surrealist writers who emerged after the war, such as Shibusawa, did contribute to the evolution of Surrealist practice among the artists of the younger generation. However, given the continuous oppression of leftist thought and radical politics in the country, culminating with the re-signing of the US-Japan Security Treaty in 1960 and its renewal in 1970, Surrealism metamorphosed into a fleeting and malleable but nevertheless constant presence not entirely dissimilar to a myth.

SELECTED BIOGRAPHIES

Abe Yoshifumi (1913–1971) was born in Gosen city, Niigata Prefecture, and was

a self-thought artist. He was a member of the Independent Art Association, the Avant-Garde Artists’ Club, the Avant-Garde Photography Association and the Art and Culture Association during the 1930s. He is the author, together with Takiguchi Shūzō, of Yōsei no kyori (1937) and worked as an avant-garde painter and photographer during the prewar and postwar periods. He was stationed in the Philippines from 1941 to 1946 and adopted the last name Nobuya after the war, becoming active in international artistic circles and spending the last decade of his life in Italy. Ei-Kyū (1911–1960) was born in Miyazaki city, Miyazaki Prefecture, as Sugita

Hideo and studied Western-style painting and photography in Tokyo. He started to publish art criticism at an early age and experimented with photography and camera-less photographic techniques in parallel to his work as a painter. He adopted the name of Ei-Kyū in 1936, simultaneous to his first solo exhibition and the publication of his first collection of artworks, Nemuri no riyū. He was a founding member of the Free Artists’ Association and the Democrat Art Association. After the war he moved to Urawa and continued to work as an artist and an educator. Fujita Tsuguharu (1886–1968) was born in Tokyo and studied at the Tokyo Fine

Arts School. He moved to Paris in 1913, becoming a prominent figure in French avant-garde circles and achieving international fame during the 1930s. Upon his return to Japan in 1941, Fujita became involved with war painting and was appointed vice-chairman of the Army Art Association in 1943. He returned to France in 1955, becoming a French citizen. Fukuzawa Ichirō (1898–1992) was born in Tomioka city, Gunma Prefecture,

and studied at the Tokyo Imperial University. He lived in Paris between 1924 and 1931, studying sculpture and painting. He exerted great influence upon his return to Japan as a Surrealist painter and critic and was a founding member of the Art and Culture Association. Imprisoned as a Surrealist for six months in 1941, he produced war painting until 1945. He travelled to Europe and the

United States in the 1950s and 1960s and received institutional recognition for

his work during his lifetime. Hanawa Gingo (1894–1957) was born in Tokyo and studied law at the

Tokyo Imperial University. He moved to Osaka in 1917 to join the Sumitomo Warehouse Company, becoming a member of the Naniwa Photography Club in 1928. A founding member of the Avant-Garde Image Group, he was among photographers who helped re-establish Naniwa after the war. He is best known for his Complex Imagination (1938) but also published photographic criticism. Hasegawa Saburō (1906–1957) was born in Shimonoseki city, Yamaguchi

Prefecture, and studied at the Tokyo Imperial University. He was an abstract artist and a founding member of the Independent Art Association, who travelled to the United States and Europe in the late 1920s and was actively involved in avant-garde art circles in Japan before and after the war. Hirai Terushichi (1900–1970) was a photographer from Osaka and an active

member of the Naniwa Photography Club and the Tanpei Photography Club. He was a founding member of the Avant-Garde Image Group. Hisano Hisashi (1903–1946) was a photographer born in Fukuoka Prefecture

and a founding member of the Société Irf. He was a member of several local photographic initiatives and published his work in such photo magazines as Photo Times and Camera Art. Ikemiya Seijirō was a photographer and a member of the Tanpei Photography

Club. His work is included in Hikari (1940). Imai Shigeru (1910–1991) was born in Nagasaki Prefecture and was a member

of the Independent Art Association, the New Plasticity Art Association, the Avant-Garde Photography Association and the Art and Culture Association. He was active as a painter and a photographer during the 1930s but withdrew from public life after the war. Inagaki Taizō was a photographer and a member of the Nagoya Photo Avant-

Garde. Katsura Yuki (1913–1991) was born in Tokyo and studied painting with such

Surrealist artists as Tōgō Seiji in the 1930s. She had her first solo exhibition in 1935 and was a founding member of the Room Nine Society. She is recognized as a pioneer women avant-garde artist in Japan and is best known for her work as a painter and illustrator after the war.

Koga Harue (1895–1933) was born in Kurume city, Fukuoka Prefecture, and

studied art in Tokyo. He also trained as a priest and studied theology before becoming a painter. His promising career was cut short by his premature passing at the age of thirty-eight. He is best known for using illustrated magazines as the source material in his work, which became distinctly Surrealist around 1929, when he exhibited at the sixteenth exhibition of the Second Division Society together with Abe Kongō and Tōgō Seiji. Koishi Kiyoshi (1908–1957) was born in Osaka and was a technician at the

Asanuma Shōkai photography supply house. He was a member of the Naniwa Photography Club from 1928 and is the author of Shoka shinkei (1933), Satsuei: Sakuga no shin gihō (1936) and Han sekai (1940). He worked in advertising and was involved in the production of photomurals for the Japanese pavilion at the 1937 Paris World Exposition. His house burnt down in Osaka in 1945 and his negatives were destroyed. After the war he lived in Fukuoka. Konomi Giichirō (1896–1951) was a photographer born in Fukuoka city,

Fukuoka Prefecture, and a founding member of the Société Irf. He studied briefly at the Keio University but had to quit school for poor health. He took part in local photographic circles and published in such magazines as Photo Times and Camera Art. Matsubara Jūzō (1900–1962) was a merchant from Ashiya and a photographer

active in the Ashiya Photo Club. He was a contributor to Kōga and The Japan Photographic Annual during the 1930s. Nagata Isshū (1903–1988) was born as Nagata Kazunaga in Moji city, Fukuoka

Prefecture, and studied Western-style painting at Tokyo Fine Arts School. He was involved with proletarian art circles during the 1920s. Active as a photographer and a photography critic from the 1930s, he was a member of the Avant-Garde Photography Association and worked for the Mainichi shinbun newspaper between 1941 and 1958. After the war, he became a member of the Japanese Fine Art Association (Nihon Bijutsukai, est. 1946) and exhibited at Yomiuri Indépendant. Nakada Sadanosuke (1888–1970) was an art critic born in Tokyo. He studied

in Berlin between 1922 and 1924 and was among the first Japanese to visit the Bauhaus during that time. Upon his return he wrote articles that introduced modernist art and photography to Japan and was also active as an artist. After the war he became known as an essayist. Nakayama Iwata (1895–1949) was born in Yanagawa city, Fukuoka Prefecture,

and studied photography at the Tokyo Fine Arts School. He moved to the United

States in 1918, first studying at the California State University and then running

a photographic studio in New York. He travelled around Europe, including Paris, and returned to Japan in 1927. He was a founding member of the Ashiya Camera Club, a regular contributor to Kōga and worked as a professional photographer in Kobe. Nishiwaki Junzaburō (1894–1982) was born in Ojiya city, Niigata Prefecture,

and studied painting before taking up economy at the Keio University in Tokyo. He studied at Oxford between 1924 and 1926 and taught English literature at Keio upon his return to Japan. Considered among the forerunners of Surrealist literature in Japan, Nishiwaki was one of the Japanese Surrealists who were arrested in advance of the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. After the war he resumed his post at Keio and continued to publish poetry and translations. Okanoue Toshiko (1928) was born in Kōchi city, Kōchi Prefecture, and studied

design at the Bunka Gakuin college in Tokyo. She met Takiguchi Shūzō in 1952 and he helped her develop her artistic practice, mostly based on the production of photo-collages. She had solo shows at the Takemiya Gallery in 1953 and 1956 and her work was included in the exhibition Chūshō to Gensō: Hi-shajitsu kaiga o dō rikai suru ka (National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, 1953–1954). She stopped making work in 1957 but is recognized and exhibited widely in Japan as well as abroad. Okamoto Tarō (1911–1996) was born in Kawasaki city and studied at the Tokyo

Fine Arts School before departing for Paris in 1930. He was active in French avant-garde circles, becoming a member of Abstraction-Création in 1933, exhibiting at the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme in 1938 and joining Le Collège de Sociologie (1937–1939). Upon his return to Japan in 1940, he became a major figure in the Japanese art world, producing iconic bodies of work after the war and publishing several influential books. Ōtsuji Kiyoji (1923–2001) was born in Tokyo and studied photography at the

Tokyo Professional School of Photography. He was a member of the Graphic Group and the Experimental Workshop and was also active as a critic. He taught at several universities from the 1960s and was a mentor to a number of prominent contemporary photographers in Japan. Sakata Minoru (1902–1974) was born in Aichi Prefecture. He was employed

by Mainichi shinbun in Osaka in 1926 and joined the Naniwa Photo Club at the same time. In 1934 he relocated to Osaka, opening Kodak’s photo supply shop and becoming a founding member of the Nagoya Photo Group, which later merged with the Nagoya Avant-Garde Club and the Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde. Sakata produced an extensive body of work as a Surrealist photographer and

critic in the 1930s and is the author of Zōkei shashin (1941). Serving in the army

between 1941 and 1945, he withdrew from public life after the war and became involved with photochemistry. Shibusawa Tatsuhiko (1928–1987) was born as Shibusawa Tatsuo in Tokyo and

studied French Literature at the University of Tokyo. He relocated to Kamakura due to poor health and worked as a freelance writer and translator. He is best known for introducing the work of Marquise de Sade to Japan, but also published several influential books of fiction and collections of essays and acted as the chief editor of the first three issues of Chi to bara (1968–1970). Shimozato Yoshio (1907–1981) was born in Nagoya and studied painting in

Kyoto. He was a member of the Independent Art Association, the New Plasticity Art Association, the Nagoya Photo Group, the Nagoya Avant-Garde Club and the Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde. He ran a Surrealist salon in his studio and was active as a painter and a photographer. He is the author and editor of Mesemu zoku, Chōgenjitsushugi shashinshū (1940) and his work is included in the Dictionnaire abrégé du surréalisme (1938). Tajima Tsugio (1903–2002) was born in Saitama and went to school in Nagoya.

He was a member of the Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde and the Free Artists’ Association. Takahashi Wataru (1900–1944) was born in Fukuoka Prefecture and studied law

at the Kyūshū Imperial University. Active in the photography circles in Fukuoka during the 1930s, he was a founding member of the Société Irf and a frequent contributor to such magazines as Photo Times and Camera Art. Takiguchi Shūzō (1903–1979) was a prominent art critic and a Surrealist artist, poet

and translator. He was born in Toyama Prefecture and studied English literature at the Keio University in Tokyo. He is the author of several renowned books, including Kindai geijutsu (1938) and the first monograph on the artist Joan Miró (1940). He was a co-organizer of the Kaigai Chōgenjitsushugi Sakuhin ten in 1937 and a founding member of several art and photography collectives, including the AvantGarde Photography Association and the Experimental Workshop. As a curator of Takemiya Gallery (Tokyo, 1951–1957) he helped launch careers of some of the bestknown Japanese artists of the twentieth century. Tarui Yoshio (1902–1977) was a painter and a photographer based in Osaka. Ueda Bizan (1888–1984) was born in Tokyo and was active as a photographer

in Osaka. He was a member of the Naniwa Photography Club and a founding member of the Tanpei Photography Club.

Yamamoto Kansuke (1914–1987) was born in Nagoya to the family that owned

the first photography supply shop in the city. He learnt French in Tokyo and read French poetry at the Meiji University, writing poetry and taking photographs from around 1930. He was involved with several photography and literary clubs during the 1930s, including the Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde, and published a Surrealist magazine Yoru no funsui (1938–1939), which was banned by the police. He resumed his activities after the war and was active in subjective photography circles. Yamanaka Chirū (1905–1977), also known as Yamanaka Tiroux, was a prominent

Surrealist poet, critic and translator. He was born and lived in Nagoya, where he studied commerce and worked for the NHK, Japan’s national broadcaster. He was a co-organizer of the Kaigai Chōgenjitsushugi Sakuhin ten in 1937 and a founding member of several art and photography collectives, including the Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde. Yasui Nakaji (1903–1942) was born in Osaka and ran his family’s paper business

after studying commerce. He was a member of the Naniwa Photo Club and the Tanpei Photography Club. He held a place of central importance in the photography circles in Osaka and is the editor of Hikari (1940).

SELECTED ORGANIZATIONS

Army Art Association (Rikugun Bijutsu Kyōkai) evolved in 1939 from the Greater

Japan Army Painters’ Association (Dai Nihon Rikugun Jūgan Gaka Kyōkai, est. 1938). It was an official channel through which the army mobilized artists for the propaganda purposes and enlisted over 140 members by 1944. Its first vicechairman was Fujishima Takeji, succeeded by Fujita Tsuguharu upon his death in 1943. It was disbanded at the end of the war. Art and Culture Association (Bijutsu Bunka Kyōkai) was established in April 1939.

Its forty-one founding members, including Ai-Mitsu, Kitawaki Noboru and Saitō Yoshishige, came from different Surrealist and abstract groups active at the time. It published a magazine under the same name (for six volumes until June 1941) and had its first exhibition in April 1940. Its second exhibition in 1941 was cancelled as its core members, Fukuzawa Ichirō and Takiguchi Shūzō, were imprisoned for their Surrealist activity. The exhibition was resumed in 1942 but the association’s avant-garde focus was suppressed until the end of the war. An important channel for postwar avant-garde activity in Japan, it is active to the present day. Ashiya Camera Club (Ashiya Kamera Kurabu) was established in 1930 in Ashiya

by Benitani Kichinosuke, Hanaya Kanbei, Nakayama Iwata, Kōrai Seiji and Matsubara Jūzō. Considered at the forefront of shinkō shashin, the club held several exhibitions and its members were regular contributors to Kōga. Avant-Garde Artists’ Club (Avangyarudo Geijutsuka Kurabu) was a research group

established in April 1936. It enlisted over seventy artists and art critics, including Abe Yoshifumi and Takiguchi Shūzō, who met monthly for a time at the Musashino teahouse in Shinjuku, with the ‘thought police’ sitting in on these gatherings. Avant-Garde Image Group (Avangyarudo Zōei Shūdan) was established in

Osaka in 1937 from twenty members of the Naniwa Photography Club and the Tanpei Photography Club. The group met on a monthly basis, with prominent members including Hanawa Gingo, Hirai Terushichi and Tarui Yoshio. It was a radical photographic outlet dedicated exclusively to the study and practice of Surrealism that operated until 1940.

Avant-Garde Photography Association (Zen’ei Shashin Kyōkai) was established

in Tokyo in 1938. It encompassed not only photographers but also artists and critics, with members including Imai Shigeru, Nagata Ishhū and Takiguchi Shūzō. The group changed its name to the Photo Plasticity Research Association (Shashin Zōkei Kenkyūkai) in 1939 and dissolved in 1940. Democrat Artists’ Association (Demokurāto Bijutsuka Kyōkai) was founded in

Osaka in 1951 and was named after the word for ‘democrat’ in Esperanto. The group enlisted painters, designers, writers and photographers from around Japan, including Ei-Kyū and Hosoe Eikō. It held exhibitions throughout the country before dissolving in 1957. Free Artists’ Association (Jiyū Bijutsuka Kyōkai) was founded in February 1937,

enlisting artists and art critics interested in the latest artistic trends such as abstraction. Its first exhibition in July 1937 encompassed such novel techniques as photogram and photo-collage, with Ei-Kyū as a participating artist, whereas the 1939 rendition showed the work of several photographers including Sakata Minoru and Shimozato Yoshio. It changed its name to the Creative Arts Association (Bijutsu Sōsaku Kyōkai) in July 1940 and held exhibitions under this name until 1944. It is active to the present day. Independent Art Association (Dokuritsu Bijutusu Kyōkai) was formed in 1930 as

a faction of the Second Division Society. It gathered artists of Fauvist, Cubist, Surrealist and other modernist orientation and held an annual exhibition from 1931. In the period from 1934 to 1940 it played a minor role for the articulation of Surrealist visual arts, with dominant groups including the New Plasticity Art Association and the Art and Culture Association. It resumed its activities after the war and is active to the present day. Japan Romantic School (Nihon Rōmanha) was a nationalist literary movement

originating in 1934 as well as a magazine of the same name that was published between 1935 and 1938. Yasuda Yojūrō is considered the leader of this movement, with sympathizers including Dazai Osamu and Nakajima Eijirō. The writers of this school were plainly anti-modern and anti-Western and promoted aesthetic and ideological idealism based on Japanese tradition. They were severely criticized, especially after the war, for fuelling the war machinery and contributing to the militarist propaganda. Japan Subjective Photography League (Nihon Shukanshugi Shashin Renmei)

was established in May 1956 and held the Dai-ikkai Kokusai Shukanshugi Shashin ten in December of the same year. Prominent members included Abe Nobuya, Ōtsuji Kiyoji and Yamamoto Kansuke.

Japan Workshop (Nippon Kōbō) was established in 1933 by photographers Natori

Yōnosuke, Kimura Ihei and Okada Sōzō together with photography critic Ina Nobuo and graphic designer Hara Hiromu. The group published a high-quality propaganda magazine aimed at foreign readership, NIPPON (1934–1945), and it enlisted such well-known photographers as Horino Masao and Domon Ken. The agency was involved with different professional projects and high-profile commissions. Japanese Avant-Garde Artists’ Club (Nihon Avangyarudo Bijutsuka Kurabu)

was established in 1947 in Tokyo and enlisted a number of prominent prewar Surrealist artists and critics such as Abe Nobuya, Fukuzawa Ichirō, Kitawaki Noboru, Okamoto Tarō and Takiguchi Shūzō. It held two exhibitions before dismantling in 1949. Nagoya Avant-Garde Club (Nagoya Abangarudo Kurabu) was established in

Nagoya in November 1937 by thirteen members including Shimozato Yoshio, Sakata Minoru and Yamanaka Chirū. The group consolidated Surrealist activities taking place in Nagoya since about 1935. The group held only one exhibition and published a single issue of its journal before dismantling in 1939. Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde (Nagoya Foto Abangarudo) was established in

Nagoya in 1939 from the photographic section of the Nagoya Avant-Garde Club. Members included Inagaki Taizō, Sakata Minoru, Shimozato Yoshio, Tajima Tsugio, Yamamoto Kansuke and Yamanaka Chirū, while Gotō Keiichirō was an associate. It changed its name to the Nagoya Photography Culture Association (Nagoya Shashin Bunka Kyōkai) in November 1940 and dissolved in 1941. Nagoya Photo Group (Nagoya Foto Guruppe) was established in 1934 by Sakata

Minoru, Shimozato Yoshio and Yamanaka Chirū. It merged with the Nagoya Avant-Garde Club in 1937. Naniwa Photography Club (Naniwa Shashin Kurabu) was established in 1904

in Osaka and is one of the earliest amateur photography clubs in the country, running to the present day. Initially supporting Pictorialism, it soon became a hub for progressive modernist photography, with shinkō shashin taking over its annual exhibitions (Namiten) at the turn of the 1930s. In 1937 the club became a meeting point for Kansai-based photographers interested in Surrealism, with prominent members at the time including Hanawa Gingo, Koishi Kiyoshi, Sakata Minoru, Ueda Bizan and Yasui Nakaji. New Plasticity Art Association (Shin Zōkei Bijutsu Kyōkai) was assembled

in September 1934 from the members of Fauvist and Surrealist orientation previously belonging to the Independent Arts Association. The first artist group

to pursue Surrealist painting, it held five exhibitions and published a magazine of

the same name (in four issues) before dismantling in 1937. Prominent members included Imai Shigeru, Shimozato Yoshio, Takiguchi Shūzō and Yamanaka Chirū. New Sensibilities School (Shinkankakuha) was a literary group formed of nineteen

members including Yokomitsu Riichi, Kataoka Teppei and Kawabata Yasunari. It was associated with the magazine Bungei jidai (1924–1927) and pursued progressive modes of modernist writing. Room Nine Society (Kyūshitsukai) was established in 1938 as a faction of the

Second Division Society. Its founding members included Katsura Yuki, Minegishi Giichi and Yoshihara Jirō and it combined interests in Surrealism and abstraction. It held exhibitions in 1939 and 1940 that were accompanied with two issues of a magazine of the same name. It stopped running after the exhibitions in 1941 and 1943. Second Division Society (Nikakai) was established in 1914 as a progressive

faction of Bunten (Monbushō Bijutsu Tenran kai, the national salon first held in 1907 under the auspices of the Ministry of Education), introducing the latest trends in European painting in its annual exhibition (Nikaten). The exhibition first became distinctly Surrealist with the participation of Abe Kongō, Koga Harue and Tōgō Seiji in its sixteenth rendition in 1929 and this trend continued for the following several years. The group continues its activities to the present day, with only a short interruption in the years between 1944 and 1946. Société Irf (Soshiete Irufu) was founded in Fukuoka in 1939 by Hisano Hisashi,

Konomi Giichirō, Takahashi Wataru, Tanaka Zentoku and Yoshizaki Hitori. The group published one issue of its magazine, Irf, before dismantling in 1940. Sōki Art Association (Sōki Bijutsu Kyōkai) was a Surrealist collective founded

in July 1938. It consisted of nineteen members assembled from different art groups, including Abe Yoshifumi and Kitawaki Noboru. It held a single exhibition in Kyoto, focusing on the Surrealist object, before merging with the Art and Culture Association in the following year. Tanpei Photography Club (Tanpei Shashin Kurabu) was established in 1930 in

Osaka on Ueda Bizan’s initiative. The most progressive photographic outlet in the Kansai region, the club enlisted over a hundred members before it stopped running in 1941, mounting regular exhibitions in Osaka and Tokyo. The club published the tenth anniversary volume, Hikari, in 1940 and prominent members included Hirai Terushichi, Honjō Kōrō, Kawasaki Kametarō, Otono Sutezo, Shiihara Osamu, Tezuka Yutaka and Yasui Nakaji. It was well known for its Surrealist orientation, especially after 1937.

NOTES

Introduction 1 2

3 4

5

Gérard Durozoi, History of the Surrealist Movement, translated by Alison Anderson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 121. Hayami Yutaka, Shururearisumu no kaiga to Nihon: Imēji no juyō to sōzō [Surrealist Painting and Japan: Image Reception and Creation] (Tokyo: Nihon Hōsō Shuppan Kyōkai, 2009), 19–22. Ibid., 30. Takiguchi Shūzō (trans.), ‘Chōgenjitsushugi to kaiga (Andore Buruton)’ [Surrealism and Painting (André Breton)], in Korekushon Takiguchi Shūzō 11, Senzen senchū hen 1: 1926–1936 [Collection Takiguchi Shūzō 11, Prewar and War Period 1, 1926–1936], ed. Takiguchi Shūzō, Ōoka Makoto et al. (Tokyo: Misuzu Shobō, 1991). Atorie (editorial), ‘Chōgenjitsushugi hihan’ [Criticising Surrealism], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 15: Shūrurearisumu kihon shiryō shūsei [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 15: Surrealism, Collection of Fundamental Documents], ed.

Wada Hirofumi (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001). 6 7

Hosea Hirata, The Poetry and Poetics of Nishiwaki Junzaburō: Modernism in Translation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), xxii–xxiv. Muramatsu Masatoshi, ‘Genjitsushugi to chōgenjitsushugi’ [Reality and Surreality], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 1: Shūrurearisumu no shi to hihyō [Collection

of Surrealism in Japan 1: Surrealist Poetry and Criticism], ed. Wada Hirofumi (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2000), 3–7. Nagoya-shi Bijutsukan (ed.), Nihon no shūrurearisumu: 1925–1945 [Surrealism in Japan: 1925–1945], exh. cat. (Nagoya: Nihon no Shūrurearisumuten Jikkō Iinkai, 1990), 18. 8 Miryam Sas, Fault Lines: Cultural Memory and Surrealism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 10–11. 9 Nakamura Giichi, Nihon kindai bijutsu ronsōshi, Zoku [History of Disputes in Japanese Modern Art, Continued] (Tokyo: Kyūryūdō, 1982), 197. 10 André Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism, translated by Richard Seaver and Helen Lange (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1974), 26. 11 Ibid., 9–14. 12 Maurice Nadeau, The History of Surrealism, translated by Richard Howard with an introduction by Roger Shattuck (New York: Macmillan, 1965), 104.

13 Krzysztof Fijalkowski, ‘Invention, Imagination, Interpretation: Collective Activity in the Contemporary Czech and Slovak Surrealist Group’, Papers of Surrealism 3 (Spring 2005): 4. 14 David J. Lu, Japan: A Documentary History (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1997), 397. 15 James L. McClain, Japan, a Modern History (New York: W.W. Norton, 2002), 390. 16 Nadeau, The History of Surrealism, 164. 17 Ibid., 125. 18 Adachi Gen, ‘Puroretaria bijutsu no shōchō: Kakumei no sensō no tame no bijutsu’ [The Prosperity and Decay of Proletarian Art: Artistic Practice for the Revolutionary War], in Bijutsu no Nihon kingendaishi: Seido, gensetsu, zōkei [Histories of Modern and Contemporary Japan through Art: Institutions, Discourses, Practice], ed. Kitazawa Noriaki, Satō Dōshin and Mori Hitoshi (Tokyo: Tōkyō Bijutsu, 2014), 290. 19 George M. Beckmann and James W. Morley, Dilemmas of Growth in Prewar Japan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974), 139–150. 20 John Clark, ‘Abstract Subjectivity in the Taisho and Early Showa Avant-Garde’, in Japanese Art after 1945: Scream against the Sky, ed. Alexandra Munroe, exh. cat. (New York: H.N. Abrams, 1994), 48. 21 I rely on a translation of this paragraph, as per Miwako Tezuka, ‘Jikken Kōbō (Experimental Workshop): Avant-Garde Experiments in Japanese Art of the 1950s’ (PhD diss., Columbia University, New York, 2005), 122–123.

22 Tōkyō Kokuritsu Kindai Bijutsukan (ed.), Shururearisumu ten [Exhibition of Surrealism], exh. cat. (Tokyo: Tōkyō Kokuritsu Kindai Bijutsukan, 1975),

unpaginated. 23 Shigemi Inaga, ‘The Impossible Avant-Garde in Japan, Does the Avant-Garde Exist in the Third World? Japan’s Example: A Borderline Case of Misunderstanding in Aesthetic Intercultural Exchange’, translated by Margaret J. Flynn, Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 41 (1993): 67–75. 24 James M. Harding and John Rouse, ‘Introduction’, in Not the Other Avant-Garde: The Transnational Foundations of Avant-Garde Performance, ed. James M. Harding and John Rouse (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010), 6. For the expansion of this criticism in relation to such evolutions in the field as the division between ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’, see Per Bäckström and Benedikt Hjartarson,

25

26 27 28

‘Rethinking the Topography of the International Avant-Garde: Introduction’, in Decentring the Avant-Garde, ed. Per Bäckström and Benedikt Hjartarson (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2014), 7–32. Shūji Takashina, ‘Introduction’, in Japon des avant gardes, 1910–1970: Exposition, ed. Centre Georges Pompidou, exh. cat. (Paris: Éditions du Centre Pompidou, 1986), 23. See also John Clark, Modern Asian Art (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998), 217–236. Sas, Fault Lines, 35. Oguma Eiji, A Genealogy of ‘Japanese’ Self-Images, translated by David Askew (Melbourne: Trans Pacific, 2002), xiii–xix. For a rare mention of women Surrealist photographers in Japan, even in a context as late as Kon Michiko’s practice in the 1990s, see Whitney Chadwick, ‘An Infinite

29 30 31 32

Play of Empty Mirrors: Women, Surrealism, and Self-Representation’, in Mirror Images: Women, Surrealism, and Self-Representation, ed. Whitney Chadwick (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 28. Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism, 20. Comte de Lautréamont, Maldoror and the Complete Works of Comte de Lautréamont, translated by Alexis Lykiard (Cambridge, MA: Exact Change, 1994), 193. André Breton, What Is Surrealism? Selected Writings, edited and introduced by Franklin Rosemot (New York: Pathfinder, 2012), 15. André Breton, Surrealism and Painting, translated by Simon Watson Taylor (New York: Monad, 1972), 32. Salvador Dalí, ‘Photography: Pure Creation of the Mind’, in The Sources of Surrealism: Art in Context, ed. Neil Matheson (Aldershot: Lund Humphries, 2006), 373.

33 Rosalind Krauss, The Originality of the Avant Garde and Other Modernist Myths (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985), 87–118.

34 Ian Walker, City Gorged with Dreams: Surrealism and Documentary Photography in Interwar Paris (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 8.

35 Margaret Plant, ‘Shopping for the Marvellous: The Life of the City in Surrealism’, in Surrealism: Revolution by Night, ed. Michael Lloyd, exh. cat. (Canberra: National

Gallery of Australia, 1993), 156. 36 Marja Warehime, Brassaï: Images of Culture and Surrealist Observer (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996), 41. 37 Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1977), 40. 38 David Bate, Photography and Surrealism: Sexuality, Colonialism and Social Dissent (London: I.B. Tauris, 2003). Ian Walker, So Exotic, So Homemade: Surrealism, Englishness and Documentary Photography (Manchester: Manchester

University Press, 2007). Krzystof Fijalkowski, Michael Richardson and Ian Walker, Surrealism and Photography in Czechoslovakia: On the Needles of Days (London: Routledge, 2016). Patricia Allmer, Lee Miller: Photography, Surrealism, and Beyond (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016). 39 Édouard Jaguer, Les Mystères de la chambre noire: Le Surréalisme et la photographie (Paris: Flammarion, 1982), 111–112. 40 Rosalind Krauss and Jane Livingstone (eds), L’Amour fou: Photography and Surrealism, exh. cat. (New York: Abbeville Press, 1986), 9. 41 Quentin Bajac et al., ‘Changer la vue’, in La Subversion des images, surréalisme, photographie, film, ed. Quentin Bajac and Clément Chéroux, exh. cat. (Paris: Édicion du Centre Pompidou, 2009), 18. For a similar precedent, see Monika Faber et al., Das Innere der Sicht: Surrealistische Fotografie der 30er und 40er Jahre: Ausstellungskatalog (Vienna: Osterreichisches Fotoarchiv, 1989). 42 Durozoi, History of the Surrealist Movement, 334–336. 43 I draw this conclusion from my correspondence and two interviews with Kurosawa

Yoshiteru, biographer of the artist, conducted in December 2012 and January 2013. Although Kurosawa provided detailed information about the image’s existence in his studies, he has not seen it prior to its inclusion in the exhibition catalogue. 44 Naomi Rosenblaum, A World History of Photography (New York: Abbeville Press, 1997), 413. Anne Wilkes Tucker et al., The History of Japanese Photography, exh.

cat. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 9. Martin Parr and Gerry Badger, The Photobook, Volume 1 (London: Phaidon Press, 2007), 113. 45 Tōkyō-to Shashin Bijutsukan (ed.), Nihon kindai shashin no seiritsu to tenkai [The Founding and Development of Modern Photography in Japan], exh. cat. (Tokyo: Tōkyō-to Shashin Bijutsukan, 1995), 2. 46 Nakayama Iwata had a retrospective exhibition with the Ashiya City Museum of Art and History in 2003, Yasui Nakaji’s retrospective travelled between Shoto Museum of Art in Tokyo and Nagoya City Art Museum in 2004 and 2005 whereas

Miyazaki Prefectural Art Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, Urawa Art Museum and the Japan Association of Art Museum celebrated Ei-Kyū’s 100th birth anniversary with an exhibition in 2011. 47 For groundbreaking research in the area that first introduced the Western readership to a number of original Surrealist texts published in Japanese, see Vera Linhartová, Dada et surréalisme au Japon (Paris: Publications Orientalistes de France, 1987). The same approach was adopted in John Clark, Surrealism in Japan (Clayton, VIC: Monash Asia Institute, Japanese Studies Centre, 1997).

48 John Solt, ‘Perception, Misperception, Nonperception’, in Yamamoto Kansuke: Conveyor of the Impossible, ed. Yamamoto Kansuke et al., exh. cat. (Tokyo: Tōkyō

Sutēshion Gyararī, 2001), 19–67. For more recent studies, see Majella Munro, Communicating Vessels: The Surrealist Movement in Japan, 1923–1970 (Cambridge: Enzo Press, 2012), 19. See also Amanda Maddox, ‘Disobedient Spirit: Kansuke Yamamoto and His Engagement with Surrealism’, in Japan’s Modern Divide: The Photographs of Hiroshi Hamaya and Kansuke Yamamoto, ed. Judith Keller and Manda Maddox, exh. cat. (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2013), 183.

49 Nagoya-shi Bijutsukan, Nihon no shūrurearisumu: 1925–1945, 180–202. 50 Wada Hirofumi (ed.), Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu [Collection of Surrealism in Japan] (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 1999–2001). 51 Solt, ‘Perception, Misperception, Nonperception’, 3. Nishimura Tomohiro allocates a more prominent role to Surrealism in the ‘Photography and Avant-Garde’ chapter of his history of Japanese art photography, although largely drawing on artist biographies to support his arguments, as in Nishimura Tomohiro, Nihon geijutsu shashinshi:

Ukiyo-e kara dejikame made [History of Art Photography in Japan: from Ukiyo-e to Digital Camera] (Kokubunji: Bigaku Shuppan, 2008), 215–292. Also, an equally significant attempt was made to engage more critically with photographic Surrealism in an exhibition at the Gunma Museum of Art, Tatebayashi, as in Gunma Kenritsu Tatebayashi Bijutsukan (ed.), Yume no naka no shizen: Shōwa shoki no shururearisumu kara gendai no kaiga e [Nature in Dreams: From Surrealism in the Early Shōwa to

Contemporary Painting], exh. cat. (Gunma: Gunma Kenritsu Tatebayashi Bijutsukan, 2006), 76–95. The exhibition catalogue assigns a full section to photographic practices, recognizing a strong presence of Surrealism in Japanese art of the 1930s.

Chapter 1 1

Henry Smith, ‘Tokyo as an Idea: An Exploration of Japanese Urban Thought Until 1945’, Journal of Japanese Studies 4, no. 1 (1978): 69–71. Miriam Silverberg, Erotic

2 3 4 5 6

Grotesque Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 29. Iizawa Kōtarō, Shashin ni kaere: ‘Kōga’ no jidai [Return to Photography: The Age of Kōga] (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1988), 32. Omuka Toshiharu, Taishōki shinkō bijutsu undō no kenkyū [The Japanese Modern Art Movement and the Avant-Garde, 1920–1927] (Tokyo: Sukaidoa, 1995). William O. Gardner, ‘New Perceptions: Kinugasa Teinosuke’s Films and Japanese Modernism’, Cinema Journal 43, no. 3 (2004): 67. Chinghsin Wu, ‘Transcending the Boundaries of the “isms”: Pursuing Modernity through the Machine in 1920s and 1930s Japanese Avant-Garde Art’, in Rethinking Japanese Modernism, ed. Roy Starrs (Leiden: Brill, 2012). Koga Harue, ‘Chōgenjitsushugi shikan’ [Personal Observations about Surrealism], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 15: Shūrurearisumu kihon shiryō shūsei [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 15: Surrealism, Collection of Fundamental

Documents], ed. Wada Hirofumi (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001), 82. 7

Christine Kuhn, ‘Film und Foto International Exhibition’, in Tōkyō-Berurin/BerurinTōkyō ten [Tokyo-Berlin/Berlin-Tokyo], ed. Mori Bijutsukan, exh. cat. (Tokyo: Mori

Bijutsukan, 2006). Iizawa Kōtarō, ‘Nihon no shashinka tachi to Berurin’ [Japanese Photographers and Berlin], in Tōkyō- Berurin/Berurin-Tōkyō ten [Tokyo-Berlin/Berlin-Tokyo], ed. Mori Bijutsukan, exh. cat. (Tokyo: Mori Bijutsukan, 2006), 37. For detailed analysis of the responses to the exhibition, see Iizawa, Shashin ni kaere, 50–54. 9 Ina Nobuo, Shashin, Shōwa gojūnenshi [Photography, History of Fifty Years of Shōwa] (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 1978), 34. 10 Masuda Rei, ‘Shōwa senzen mae to Onchi Kōshirō, Shiihara Osamu, Ei-Kyū’ [Japanese Photography of the 1920s and 1930s: Photographic Works of Koshiro Onchi, Osamu Shiihara and Ei- kyu], translated by Kikugo Ogawa, in Modanizumu 8

no kōseki: Onchi Kōshirō, Shiihara Osamu, Ei-Kyū [Traces of Light in Modernism:

Koshiro Onchi, Osamu Shiihara and Ei-Kyu], ed. Tōkyō Kokuritsu Kindai Bijutsukan, exh. cat. (Tokyo: Tōkyō Kokuritsu Kindai Bijutsukan, 1997), 8. See also Fujimura Satomi, ‘Shinkō shashin to wa nandatta no ka’ [What Was New Photography], in Kōga to shinkō shashin: Modanizumu no Nihon [The Magazine and the New Photography: KOGA and Japanese Modernism], ed. Tōkyō-to Shashin Bijutsukan, exh.cat. (Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai, 2018).

11 Iizawa, Shashin ni kaere, 47. 12 Iizawa Kōtarō, ‘Modanizumu to shite no shinkō shashin’ [New Photography and Modernism], in Nihon Modanizumu no kenkyū: Shisō, seikatsu, bunka [Study of Japanese Modernism: Thought, Life, Culture], ed. Minami Hiroshi (Tokyo: Burēn

Shuppan, 1982), 209. 13 Iizawa Kōtarō, Toshi no shisen: Nihon no shashin 1920–30 nendai [The View of the City: Japanese Photography in the 1920s-1930s] (Osaka: Sōgensha, 1989), 17. See also Kerry Ross, Photography for Everyone, The Cultural Lives of Cameras and Consumers in Early Twentieth-Century Japan (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015), 8. 14 Itagaki Takao, Kikai to geijutsu to no kōryū [The Correspondence between Machine and Art] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1929). See also Kanamaru Shigene, Shinkō shashin no tsukurikata [How to Make New Photography] (Tokyo: Genkōsha, 1932).

15 Ina Nobuo, ‘Shashin ni kaere’ [Return to Photography], in Shashin ni kaere [Return to Photography: Japanese Photography of the 1930s], ed. Zen Foto Gallery (Tokyo: Zen Foto Gallery, 2010), 8. I rely on the translation of the original text provided in this volume.

16 For all issues of the magazines, see Iizawa Kōtarō (ed.), Kōga [Pictures of Light] (Tokyo: Fukkokuban ‘Kōga’ Kankōkai, 1990). See also Tōkyō-to Shashin Bijutsukan (ed.), Kōga to shinkō shashin: Modanizumu no Nihon [The Magazine and the

New Photography: KOGA and Japanese Modernism], exh.cat. (Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai, 2018). 17 Silverberg, Erotic Grotesque Nonsense, 31. 18 Nishimura, Nihon geijutsu shashinshi, 234. 19 Nakayama Iwata, ‘Jun geijutsu shashin’ [Pure Art Photography], Asahi kamera 5, no. 1 (1928): 40. Mitsuda Yuri, ‘Kukkyoku to kirameki, Nakayama Iwata no sakuhin to jidai’ [Flexure and Glitter: Nakayama Iwata’s Work and Its Time], in Nakayama Iwata ten: Modan fotogurafi [Nakayama Iwata: Modern Photography], ed. Ashiya Shiritsu Bijutsu Hakubutsukan, exh. cat. (Kyoto: Tankōsha, 2003), 265. 20 Nakayama Iwata, ‘Jun geijutsu shashin’, 40. 21 Although there is no record of these photographs, three of them are known to have been solarizations, as in Ashiya Shiritsu Bijutsu Hakubutsukan (ed.), Ashiya Kamera Kurabu 1930–1942: Ashiya no bijutsu o saguru [Ashiya Camera Club 1930–1942: Exploring the Beauty of Ashiya] (Ashiya: Ashiya Shiritsu Bijutsu Hakubutsukan, 1998), 7.

22 Breton, Surrealism and Painting, 32. 23 Takiguchi, ‘Chōgenjitsushugi to kaiga’, 109–212. 24 Takiguchi Shūzō, ‘Man Rei’ [Man Ray], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 3: Shūrurearisumu no shashin to hihyō [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 3: Surrealist Photography and Criticism], ed. Takeba Jō (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2000). 25 Arturo Schwartz, Man Ray, The Rigour of Imagination (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977), 236–237. 26 Mitsuda, ‘Kukkyoku to kirameki’, 269. 27 Wada Hirofumi (ed.), Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 15: Shūrurearisumu kihon shiryō shūsei [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 15: Surrealism, Collection of Fundamental Documents] (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001), 477. Moriguchi Tari, Pari shinkō kaiga senshū [Collection of New Art in Paris] (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1933).

28 Wada, Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 15, 478. 29 Matsumi Teruhiko, Kōkoku shashin no modanizumu: Shashinka Nakayama Iwata to 1930 nendai [Modernity in Commercial Photography: Photography of Nakayama Iwata and the 1930s] (Tokyo: Seikyūsha, 2015), 42–44.

30 Nagoya-shi Bijutsukan, Nihon no shūrurearisumu: 1925–1945, 50. 31 Pari Tōkyō Shinkō Bijutsu tenrankai mokuroku [Catalogue of the Exhibition of New Art in Paris and Tokyo], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 15: Shūrurearisumu kihon shiryō shūsei [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 15: Surrealism, Collection of

Fundamental Documents], ed. Wada Hirofumi (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001). 32 Ibid., 158–161.

33 Namigata Tsuyoshi, Ekkyō no avangyarudo [Border-Crossing Avant-Garde] (Tokyo: NTT Shuppan, 2005). 34 Adachi Gen, Zen’ei no idenshi: Anakizumu kara sengo bijutsu e [Memes of the Japanese Avant-Garde: From Anarchism to Postwar Art] (Kunitachi: Buryukke, 2012), 173–176. 35 Sandra Wilson, The Manchurian Crisis and Japanese Society, 1931–33 (London: Routledge, 2002), 2. 36 Mitsuda Yuri, ‘Shōwa zenki no bijutsukai to shashin sakuhin’ [Art World and Photographic Works in the Early Part of Shōwa], in Shōwaki bijutsu tenrankai no kenkyū: Senzenhen [Research into Art Exhibitions in Shōwa Era, Prewar Edition],

ed. Tōkyō Bunkazai Kenkyūjo Kikaku Jōhōbu [Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties] (Tokyo: Chūō Kōron Bijutsu Shuppan, 2009), 382. The ‘art world’ was commonly referred to in Japanese of the time as bijutsukai whereas the ‘photography world’ was referred to as shashinkai. 37 Sawa Masahiro and Wada Hirofumi (eds), Nihon no Shūrurearisumu [Japanese Surrealism] (Tokyo: Sekai Shisōsha, 1995). Wada, Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 15. Tsuruoka Yoshihisa (ed.), Korekushon, Toshi modanizumu shishi 3, Shūrurearisumu [Collection: Poetry and Illustration of Urban Modernity

Volume 3, Surrealism] (Tokyo: Yumani Shobō, 2009). Nishimura Masahiro (ed.), Korekushon, Toshi modanizumu shishi 14: VOU Kurabu no jikken [Collection: Poetry and Illustration of Urban Modernity Volume 14: Experiments of VOU Club] (Tokyo: Yumani Shobō, 2011). Sawa Masahiro (ed.), Korekushon, Toshi modanizumu shishi 15: VOU Kurabu to jūgonen sensō [Collection: Poetry and Illustration of Urban Modernity, Volume 15: VOU Club and Fifteen Year War] (Tokyo: Yumani Shobō,

2011). 38 Wilson, The Manchurian Crisis, 31. 39 Morris Low, Japan on Display: Photography and the Emperor (London: Routledge, 2006), 58–77. Wilson, The Manchurian Crisis, 30.

40 Editor’s Remarks, Asahi kamera, 13/5 (1932), 548. 41 Koishi Kiyoshi, Shoka shinkei [Early Summer Nerves] (Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai, 2005). 42 Ina Nobuo, ‘“Kōgakai” ni tsuite’ [Kōga Meeting], Kōga 2, no. 6 (1933): 156–157. 43 Ina Nobuo, ‘Shashinkai e no kōkaijō (II)’ [An Open Letter Addressed to the Photography World (II)], Kōga 2, no.10 (1933): 253. 44 Ibid., 254. 45 Takeba Joe, ‘The Age of Modernism: From Visualization to Socialization’, in The History of Japanese Photography, ed. Anne Wilkes Tucker et al. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 148. I rely on Takeba’s translation of this phrase. 46 Yamawaki Iwao, ‘Naniga okashii’ [Is There Something Funny?], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 3: Shūrurearisumu no shashin to hihyō [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 3: Surrealist Photography and Criticism], ed. Takeba Jō (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001), 52.

47 Ibid. 48 Yamawaki Iwao, ‘Nihon no fotomontāju o miru’ [Looking at Japanese Photomontage], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 3: Shūrurearisumu no shashin

to hihyō [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 3: Surrealist Photography and Criticism], ed. Takeba Jō (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001), 54. 49 Koishi Kiyoshi, ‘Seimei no gangu’ [Life’s Toys], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 3: Shūrurearisumu no shashin to hihyō [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 3: Surrealist Photography and Criticism], ed. Takeba Jō (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001).

50 Ibid., 63–65. 51 Ibid., 66. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, translated by Richard Howard (London: Vintage Books, 2000), 10–15. 52 Koishi Kiyoshi, ‘Shinkankaku no hyōgen: Riarizumu no kanata e’ [Expressions of New Sensibility: Going Beyond Reality], Kamera āto, June Edition (1935): 150. 53 Ibid., 151. 54 Koishi Kiyoshi, Satsuei: Sakuga no shingihō [Photography: A New Method for Image-Making] (Tokyo: Genkōsha, 1936). 55 Gennifer Weisenfeld, ‘Touring Japan-as-Museum: NIPPON and Other Japanese Imperial Travelogues’, positions: east asia culture critique 8, no. 3 (2000): 747–793. 56 Ibid., 752–754. 57 Silverberg, Erotic Grotesque Nonsense, 3. See also Omuka Toshiharu, Hijōji no modanizumu: 1930 nenndai teikoku Nihon no bijutsu [Modernism in a Time of Crisis: Art in 1930s Imperial Japan] (Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai, 2017), 1–17. 58 Koishi, ‘Seimei no gangu’, 80. 59 Sugita Hideo, ‘Fotoguramu no jiyū na seisaku no tame ni’ [For a Free Production of Photograms], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 14: Ei-Kyū, Shimozato Yoshio, renzu no avangyarudo [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 14: Ei-Kyū, Shimozato Yoshio, Avant-Garde of the Lens], ed. Yamada Satoshi (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001).

60 For a detailed biography of the artist, see Yamada Kōshun, Ei-Kyū: Hyōden to sakuhin [Ei-Kyū: Critical Biography and Artworks] (Tokyo: Kabushiki Kaisha Seiryūdō,

1976). 61 Sugita, ‘Fotoguramu no jiyū na seisaku no tame ni’, 43. 62 Referred to in a loanword from French as étranger, as per Ibid. 63 Silverberg, Erotic Grotesque Nonsense, 53. Donald Richie, ‘Foreword’, in The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa, ed. Yasunari Kawabata (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), xviii. 64 Yamada, Ei-Kyū, 76. 65 Ibid., 115. 66 Ibid. 67 For more details about Fukuzawa’s use of the illustrated press, see Ōtani Shōgo, ‘Fukuzawa Ichrō to korāju: 1930 nendai shoki ni okeru shūrurearisumu juyō o megutte’ [Ichiro Fukuzawa and Collage: A Japanese Artist’s Adoption of Surrealism in the Early 1930s], Tõkyō Kokuritsu Kindai Bijutsukan Kenkyū Kiyō [Bulletin of the National Museum of Modern Art] 5 (1996): 55–76. 68 Yamada, Ei-Kyū, 119.

69 Ibid., 124–125. 70 Ei-Kyū, ‘Gendai seikatsu to hikari to kage to: Foto dessan no sakusha to shite no kansō’ [Modern Life, Light and Shadow: Impressions of a Photo-Drawing’s Creator], Hōmu raifu 2, no. 8 (1936): 28. 71 Ei-Kyū, ‘Genjitsu ni tsuite’ [On Reality], Atorie 14, no. 6 (1937): 71–74. 72 Ibid., 71. 73 Ibid., 73. 74 Rosalind Krauss, ‘Photography in the Service of Surrealism’, in L’Amour fou: Photography and Surrealism, ed. Rosalind Krauss and Jane Livingstone, exh. cat. (New York: Abbeville Press, 1986), 24–25. Bate, Photography and Surrealism, 9. 75 David Bate, ‘Introduction’, History of Photography 29, no. 2 (2015): 97–98. 76 Ishii Ayako, ‘“Zen’ei” ga kagayaita kisetsu’ [The Season of Bright ‘Avant-Garde’], in Nihon no shashinka 15: Koishi Kiyoshi to zen’ei shashin [Complete Collection of Japanese Photographers 15: Koishi Kiyoshi and Avant-Garde Photography], ed. Nagano Shigeichi, Iizawa Kōtarō and Kinoshita Naoyuki (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1999), 62–63. 77 Mitsuda, ‘Shōwa zenki no bijutsukai to shashin sakuhin’, 379. The organization was officially dissolved in 1928, with its faction National Painting Society (Kokugakai) keeping the name of the exhibition. 78 I am grateful to Ōtsuki Akimi at the Ashiya City Museum of Art and History for sharing information about Matsubara and for showing me his work during my visit to the museum in April 2017.

79 Ashiya Shiritsu Bijutsu Hakubutsukan, Ashiya Kamera Kurabu 1930–1942, 22. 80 Matsubara Jūzō, Kaihō sareta kūsō [Liberated Fantasy], Nihon shashin nenkan (1936–37): 12. This remark is made in the comments that all photographers supplied to the Annual, including technical specs of their images. Matsubara

81 82 83 84

references a ‘research into Rimbaud’s love’ but misspells Rimbaud’s name as Rabō rather than Ranbō in Japanese. In the same volume, the Index of works in English also misspells the title of Matsubara’s work as A Fantacy. Harry D. Harootunian, History’s Disquiet: Modernity, Cultural Practice and the Question of Everyday Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 116. Peter Eckersall, ‘From Liminality to Ideology: The Politics of Embodiment in Prewar Avant-Garde Theatre in Japan’, in Not the Other Avant-Garde, ed. James Harding and John Rouse (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006), 231. Matsubara Jūzō, ‘Torikku shashin no utsushikata’ [How to Make Trick Photographs], Asahi kamera 27, no. 2 (1939): 298–299. Nakada Sadanosuke, ‘Kokuten no shashin’ [Photography at the National Exhibition], Mizue, no. 415 (1939): 16. The review includes Matsubara’s Contrast (Kontorasuto), an assemblage that attests to the same abstracting tendency as in Ei-Kyū’s work. Other photographers who exhibited at the show include Nakayama Iwata and

Hanaya Kanbei. 85 Clément Chéroux, ‘The Avant-Garde of Amateurs’, in Photography: A New Vision of the World 1891–1940, ed. Gerry Badger and Walter Guadagnini (Milan: Skira, 2012), 23. 86 Ibid., 15.

87 Ibid., 25. 88 Takeba, ‘The Age of Modernism’, 138. 89 Kaneko Maki, ‘Seido to shakai’ [Institutions and Society], in Bijutsu no Nihon kingendaishi: Seido, gensetsu, zōkei [Histories of Modern and Contemporary Japan through Art: Institutions, Discourses, Practice], ed. Kitazawa Noriaki, Satō Dōshin and Mori Hitoshi (Tokyo: Tōkyō Bijutsu, 2014), 458.

Chapter 2 1 2

Nagoya-shi Bijutsukan, Nihon no shūrurearisumu: 1925–1945, 74. Omuka Toshiharu (ed.), Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 2: Shūrurearisumu no bijutsu to hihyō [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 2: Surrealist Art and Criticism] (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001), 397.

3

Adolf Behne’s Von Kunst zur Gestaltung (1925) was a significant point of reference,

4

Takizawa Kyōji, ‘Avangyarudo kara puroretaria bijutsu e: Bijutsu seido no yōdō to

as per Omuka, Taishōki shinkō bijutsu, 769. kaihen’ [From Avant-Garde to Proletarian Art: The Shaking and Reorganisation of

Art Institutions], in Bijutsu no Nihon kingendaishi: Seido, gensetsu, zōkei [Histories of Modern and Contemporary Japan through Art: Institutions, Discourses, Practice], ed. Kitazawa Noriaki, Satō Dōshin and Mori Hitoshi (Tokyo: Tōkyō Bijutsu, 2014), 243. 5 Omuka, Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 2, 382. 6 Aoki Shigeru and Tōkyō Kokuritsu Bunkazai Kenkyūjō (eds.), Kindai Nihon āto katarogu korekushon 73: Jiyū Bijutsu Kyōkai, Bijutsu Sōsakka Kyōkai [Collection of Modernist Japanese Art Catalogues Vol. 73: Free Artists’ Association and Art Creatives’ Association] (Tokyo: Yumani Shobō, 2004). 7 Mitsuda, ‘Shōwa zenki no bijutsukai to shashin sakuhin’, 382–383. For collage’s historical development in Japan, see Fujimura Satomi, ‘Korāju to fotomontāju: Shashin reimeiki no fotomontāju kara Nihon no shashin ni okeru korāju no juyō made’ [Collage and Photomontage: From Photomontage at the Dawn of Age of Photography to Reception of Collage in Japanese Photography], Tōkyō-to Shashin Bijutsukan, Kiyō [The Bulletin: Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography] 6

(2007): 28–38. For an overview, see Reiko Tomii, ‘Introduction: Collectivism in Twentieth-Century Japanese Art with a Focus on Operational Aspects of Dantai’, positions: east asia cultures critique 21, no. 2 (2013): 225–267. 9 Philippe-Alain Michaud, ‘La coalescence et la suture’, in La Subversion des images, surréalisme, photographie, film, ed. Quentin Bajac and Clément Chéroux, exh. cat. (Paris: Éditions du Centre Pompidou, 2009), 176. 10 Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, translated by Joyce Crick, introduction and notes by Richie Robertson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 8

137.

11 For further details about this exhibition, see Cristina Garbagna, Collages: From Cubism to New Dada (Milan: Electa, 2007), 280–281. See also Brandon Taylor, Collage: The Making of Modern Art (London: Thames and Hudson, 2004),

57–58.

12 Takiguchi refers Japanese readers interested in collage to Aragon’s text only a year after, as per Takiguchi, ‘Man Rei’, 6. 13 Imai Shigeru, ‘Kaiga ni okeru montaju ni tsuite’ [Montage in Painting], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 2: Shūrurearisumu no bijutsu to hihyō [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 2: Surrealist Art and Criticism], ed. Omuka Toshiharu (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001), 65.

14 Ibid. 15 Louis Aragon, ‘The Challenge to Painting’, in The Surrealists Look at Art, ed. Pontus Hulten (Venice, CA: Lapis Press, 1990), 54. 16 Ibid., 55–56. 17 Ibid., 65. 18 Imai Shigeru, ‘Kaiga ni arawareta katsuji ni taisuru nōto’ [A Note on the Printed Material in Painting], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 2: Shūrurearisumu no bijutsu to hihyō [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 2: Surrealist Art and Criticism], ed. Omuka Toshiharu (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001), 76. 19 Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism, 123–124. 20 Kurosawa Yoshiteru (ed.), Yamanaka Chirū shoshi nenpu [Yamanaka Tiroux Chronologie et Bibliographie] (Tokyo: Tanseisha, 2005), 126–127. The exhibition travelled to Nagoya from its third instalment, after Yamanaka and Shimozato joined the group.

21 Breton’s image is described in Clara Elizabeth Orban, The Culture of Fragments: Words and Images in Futurism and Surrealism (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997),

110–111. 22 The general composition of the image also resonates with Georges Hugnet’s work. For Yamanaka’s writing about Hugnet, see Yamanaka Chirū, ‘Chōgenjitsushugi to wa nanika’ [What Is Surrealism], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 6: Yamanaka Chirū, 1930 nendai no oruganaizā [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 6: Yamanaka Chirū, Organiser of the 1930s], ed. Kurosawa Yoshiteru (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 1999). Hugnet’s correspondence with Yamanaka is held in the Yamanaka Chirū Archive at the Keio Hiyoshi Library and I am grateful to Professor Kasai Hiroyuki for

showing me the collection in April 2017. 23 Michel Foucault, This Is Not a Pipe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 36. 24 Ibid., 21. 25 Harry Bober, ‘The Zodiacal Miniature of the Très Riches Heures of the Duke of Berry – Its Sources and Meaning’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes

11 (1948): 1. 26 Ibid., 18. 27 Rosalind Krauss, ‘Grids’, October 9 (1979): 59. 28 Yamanaka Chirū, ‘POCO A POCO, Saikin no gashū no shōkai’ [POCO A POCO, Introducing the Recent Illustrated Albums], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 6: Yamanaka Chirū, 1930 nendai no oruganaizā [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 6:

Yamanaka Chirū, Organiser of the 1930s], ed. Kurosawa Yoshiteru (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 1999).

29 Yamanaka Chirū, ‘Chōgenjitsushugi no taishō’ [The Subject of Surrealism], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 6: Yamanaka Chirū, 1930 nendai no oruganaizā [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 6: Yamanaka Chirū, Organiser of the 1930s], ed. Kurosawa Yoshiteru (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 1999).

30 Kurosawa, Yamanaka Chirū shoshi nenpu, 12. 31 Yamanaka, ‘Chōgenjitsushugi no taishō’, 416. 32 David Gascoyne, ‘Introduction’, in The Automatic Message; The Magnetic Fields; The Immaculate Conception, ed. André Breton, Paul Éluard and Philippe Soupault, translated by David Gascoyne, Antony Melville and Jon Graham, introduced by David Gascoyne and Antony Melville (London: Atlas Press, 1997),

45. 33 Catriona McAra, ‘Surrealism’s Curiosity: Lewis Carroll and the Femme-Enfant’, Papers of Surrealism 9 (Summer 2011): 1–25. 34 Haim Finkelstein, ‘Screen and Layered Depth: Surrealist Painting and the Conceptualization of the Mental Space’, Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 51 (2007): 183. 35 Haim Finkelstein, The Screen in Surrealist Art and Thought (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007). 36 Yamanaka, ‘Chōgenjitsushugi no taishō’, 416. Yamanaka distinguishes between photomontage and photo-collage in that the latter is a product of an irrational mind (418). 37 With ‘photo-object’ referred to in Japanese as foto obuje in a loanword and is translated as buttai shashin, as per Ibid., 417. 38 Kurosawa, Yamanaka Chirū shoshi nenpu, 160. 39 Three of these drawings were also seen in the Nagoya exhibition in February 1936, as per Ibid., 126. The Japanese translation is titled Aru isshō no uchimaku arui wa ningen no sentō. 40 This exhibition also travelled to Nagoya in June 1937 but the exhibition catalogue there lists the names of works in a different manner and does not record the reproductions of foreign Surrealist works seen in Tokyo in March, as in Ibid., 127. 41 Five of the exhibited reproductions are included in Nagoya-shi Bijutsukan, Nihon no shūrurearisumu: 1925–1945, 83. A detailed list of these works is provided in Kurosawa, Yamanaka Chirū shoshi nenpu, 162–163.

42 Yamanaka Chirū, ‘Shururearisumu shisō no kokusaika: Kōki ni kaete’ [Internationalisation of Surrealist Thought: A Postscript], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 15: Shūrurearisumu kihon shiryō shūsei [Collection of Surrealism in

Japan 15: Surrealism, Collection of Fundamental Documents], ed. Wada Hirofumi (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001), 265. Titled in the table of contents in French and over ten pages long, Yamanaka’s article is contextualized as a ‘postscript’ to the collection of mostly translated Surrealist texts, for which he is accredited as an editor (directeur), as per Yamanaka Chirū (ed.), L’Échange surréaliste, in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 15: Shūrurearisumu kihon shiryō shūsei [Collection of Surrealism in

Japan 15: Surrealism, Collection of Fundamental Documents], ed. Wada Hirofumi (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001). The compilation also includes a set of Takiguchi’s

43 44 45 46

47 48 49

50 51 52 53

poems titled by the names of several Surrealist artists (Ernst, Dali, Magritte, Miró, Picasso, Man Ray and Tanguy). Yamanaka, ‘Shururearisumu shisō’, 266–267. For the original quote, see Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism, 262. Ibid. Ibid., 268–275. Kaigai Chōgenjitsushugi Sakuhinshū: ALBUM SURRÉALISTE [Collection of Foreign Surrealist Works: Surrealist Album], Mizue 388 (1937). Takiguchi wrote the introductory note and translated captions into Japanese whereas everything else was compiled by Yamanaka. Ibid., 1. ‘Le surréalisme autour du monde’, Minotaure 10, no. 3 (1937): unpaginated. Yamanaka’s ‘POCO A POCO’ is an example how substantial part of this exchange took place through correspondence. As the materials held in the Yamanaka Chirū Archive at the Keio Hiyoshi Library and at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art Archive attest, it was Penrose who sent the Surrealist publications to Yamanaka, who in turn sent Penrose his review of this literature once it was published. Nagoya-shi Bijutsukan, Nihon no shūrurearisumu: 1925–1945, 92. André Breton and Paul Éluard, Dictionnaire abrégé du surréalisme, exh. cat. (Paris: Galerie Beaux-Arts, 1938), 37 and 66. Ibid., 27 and 30. Yamanka Chirū, ‘Kaigai Chōgenjitsushugi Sakuhin ten hōkokusho’ [Report about the Exhibition of Foreign Surrealist Works], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 6: Yamanaka Chirū, 1930 nendai no oruganaizā [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 6: Yamanaka Chirū, Organiser of the 1930s], ed. Kurosawa Yoshiteru (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 1999). Yamanka is here clearly referring to Man Ray as a European

artist. A letter sent to Yamanaka from Alfred Barr, director at MoMA in New York, addressed on 7 January 1937, testifies that Yamanaka made an effort to include American artists but was told by Barr that there is not really a very wide interest in Surrealism in the country as of yet. The letter is held in the Yamanaka Chirū Archive at the Keio Hiyoshi Library. 54 Ibid., 405. 55 Yamada Satoshi, ‘Shūrurearisumu kaiga no taidō (1934–1937)’ [Awakening of Surrealist Painting (1934–1937)], in Nihon no shūrurearisumu: 1925–1945 [Surrealism in Japan: 1925–1945], ed. Nagoya- shi Bijutsukan, exh. cat. (Nagoya: Nihon no Shūrurearisumuten Jikkō Iinkai, 1990), 74–75.

56 Yamanaka Chirū, ‘Atarashii foto korāju’ [New Photo-Collage], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 6: Yamanaka Chirū, 1930 nendai no oruganaizā [Collection of

Surrealism in Japan 6: Yamanaka Chirū, Organiser of the 1930s], ed. Kurosawa Yoshiteru (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 1999). 57 For the relationship between the game and Freud’s writing, see Anne M. Kern, ‘From One Exquisite Corpse (in)to Another: Influences and Transformations from Early to Late Surrealist Games’, in The Exquisite Corpse: Chance and Collaboration in Surrealism’s Parlor Game, eds. Kanta Kochar- Lindgren, Davis Schneideman and Tom Denlinger (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009).

58 Japanese haiku verse, originating in the seventeenth century, is composed of three phrases, each of which needs to contain a specified number of phonetic units (in combination of five-seven-five). It normally consists of a juxtaposition of two different scenes and a resolution between them.

59 Alain Virmaux and Odette Virmaux, La Constellation surréaliste (Lyon: La Manufacture, 1988).

60 Nagoya-shi Bijutsukan, Nihon no shūrurearisumu: 1925–1945, 127. 61 Yamada, Ei-Kyū, 161–162. 62 Hitoshi Nara, Inexorable Modernity: Japan’s Grappling with Modernity in the Arts (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007), 84–85. 63 Yamada, Ei-Kyū, 156. 64 Ōtani Shōgo, Gekidōki no avangyarudo: Shururearisumu to Nihon no kaiga 1928–1953 [Avant-Garde in Turbulent Times: Surrealism and Japanese Painting, 1928–1953] (Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai, 2016), 265–266. 65 Ei-Kyū et al., Hikari no kaseki: Ei-Kyū to fotoguramu no sekai [Fossilization, Imprinted Light: Ei-Kyū and Photogram Images] exh. Cat. (Urawa: Saitama Kenritsu Kindai Bijutsukan, 1997), 100. 66 Ming Tiampo, Gutai: Decentering Modernism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 41. 67 Yumiko Iida, Rethinking Identity in Modern Japan: Nationalism as Aesthetics (London: Routledge, 2002), 18–20. The ‘Fundamentals’ were sold in 2 million copies, significantly outreaching its initial print of 300,000, as per Ibid., 20.

68 Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957).

69 Edward James, ‘La chapeau du people et les chapeaux de la Reine’, Minotaure 9 (1936): 54–59.

70 Alastair Brotchie, ‘Introduction’, in Encyclopedia Acephalica, ed. Georges Bataille, assembled by Alastair Brotchie (London: Atlas Press, 1995), 12.

71 Ōtani, Gekidōki no avangyarudo, 268–270. 72 Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, translated and with an introduction by Daniel Warren Smith, afterword by Tom Clark Conley (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), 20.

73 Ibid., 20–21. 74 Joyce Cheng, ‘Mask, Mimicry, Metamorphosis: Roger Caillois, Walter Benjamin and Surrealism in the 1930s’, Modernism/Modernity 16, no. 1 (2009): 61–86. 75 Alicia Volk, ‘Authority, Autonomy, and the early Taishō “Avant-Garde”’, positions: east asia cultures critique 21, no. 2 (2013): 451–473. 76 Ibid., 453. 77 Ibid., 469. 78 Takeba, ‘The Age of Modernism’, 150. 79 ‘Naniwa shashinten zadankai’ [Symposium on the Occasion of the Naniwa Photography Exhibition], Foto taimusu 15, no. 9 (1938): 27. 80 Nishimura, Nihon geijutsu shashinshi, 281.

81 Krauss, ‘Grids’, 58–60. 82 Hanawa Gingo, ‘Shashinga ni okeru zen’eiteki sakufū: Ōsaka no aru shashin kurabu reikai ni te hanasu’ [Avant-Garde Style in Photography, Discussion from a Regular Meeting of an Osaka Photo Club], Foto taimusu 15, no. 5 (1938): 26. 83 Ibid. 84 Hanawa’s mention is earlier than in Yamanaka’s ‘New Photo Collage’, as in Hanawa Gingo, ‘Shashinga ni okeru chōgenjitsushugi no hatten’ [Development of Surrealism in the Photographic Image], Foto taimusu 15, no. 4 (1938): 32. 85 Nagoya-shi Bijutsukan, Nihon no shūrurearisumu: 1925–1945, 96. 86 Ibid., 144. Abe’s interest in Surrealism can be traced back to around the age of twenty, after his artistic debut in 1932, as in Hamada Mayumi, ‘Senzen no Abe Nobuo (Yoshifumi) no katsudō: Takiguchi Shūzō to no kankei o chūshin ni’ [Abe Nobuo’s (Yoshifumi) Prewar Activities: Focus on the Relationship with Takiguchi Shūzō], Niigata Kenritsu Kindai Bijutsukan kenkyū kiyō [Bulletin of the Niigata

Prefectural Museum of Modern Art] 9 (2010): 10. 87 Nagata Isshū and Takiguchi Shūzō, ‘Yume to jinsei oyobi sono tegami’ [Dream and Life, Correspondence], Foto taimusu 15, no. 7 (1938): 82–84. 88 Ibid., 83. 89 Ibid., 84. 90 Nagata was active in the proletarian arts movement both as a writer and an artist and was imprisoned together with Murayama Tomoyoshi, as per Gennifer Weisenfeld, MAVO: Japanese Artists and the Avant-Garde 1905–1931 (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 2010), 252. 91 Gérard de Nerval, Aurélia and Other Writings, translated by Robert Duncan and Marc Lowenthal (Boston: Exact Change, 1996), 3. 92 Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism, 25. 93 Breton, What Is Surrealism?, 204. 94 Ibid. 95 Nerval, Aurélia and Other Writings, 73–114. 96 Takiguchi also suggests that the image shows a single body with three heads, as per Nagata and Takiguchi, ‘Yume to jinsei’, 84. 97 In Japanese public baths, wet towels are often worn on heads to optimize the heat of the body. 98 Nagoya-shi Bijutsukan, Nihon no shūrurearisumu: 1925–1945, 156. 99 Abe Yoshifumi, ‘Yama no shashin’ [Photographing Mountains], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 3: Shūrurearisumu no shashin to hihyō [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 3: Surrealist Photography and Criticism], ed. Takeba Jō (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001).

Chapter 3 1

‘Les Artistes D’Avant-Garde’, Atorie 14, no. 6 (1937): unpaginated. The volume is titled in Japanese as ‘Zen’ei kaiga no kenkyū to hihan’.

2

In April 1937, Kitao exhibited for the first time the photographic works that he was developing since his studies in Germany at a joint exhibition with Ei-Kyū, following their collaboration in Miyazaki since around 1934. He went on to also exhibit at the first exhibition of the Free Artists’ Association in 1937, same as Ei-Kyū, becoming a full member of the group in 1938, as in Nagoya-shi Bijutsukan, Nihon no

3 4 5 6 7

shūrurearisumu: 1925–1945, 166. Namigata, Ekkyō no avangyarudo, 55. A number of sources confirm this characteristic of the exhibition, including a pamphlet printed by Nagoya’s Shin Aichi shinbun, a sponsor of the show in the city.

The pamphlet is held at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. Yamada Satoshi, ‘Foto-abangyarudo no dōkō’ [Tendency of a Photo Avant-Garde], in Nihon no shūrurearisumu: 1925–1945 [Surrealism in Japan: 1925–1945], ed. Nagoyashi Bijutsukan, exh. cat. (Nagoya: Nihon no Shūrurearisumuten Jikkō Iinkai, 1990). Takiguchi Shūzō, ‘Shashin to chōgenjitsushugi’ [Photography and Surrealism], Foto taimusu 15, no. 2 (1938): 50–55. Ibid. The genealogy of Surrealist photography is traced back in the article to Atget. The medium is described as playing a significant role in Breton’s novels Nadja and L’Amour fou as well as in Surrealist publications such as Minotaure. Bellmer, Brassaï, Dora Maar and Man Ray are singled out as photographers working in the closest relation to Surrealism.

8

Takeba, ‘The Age of Modernism’, note 10, 150. For the original text, published in the January 1934 issue of Photo Times, see Takiguchi Shūzō, ‘Ujeinu Atoje’ [Eugène Atget], in Korekushon Takiguchi Shūzō 11, Senzen senchū hen I: 1926–1936

9 10 11

[Collection Takiguchi Shūzō 11, Prewar and War Period 1, 1926–1936] (Tokyo: Misuzu Shobō, 1991). Takiguchi Shūzō, ‘Shashin to kaiga no kōryū’ [Interchange between Photography and Painting], Foto taimusu 15, no. 5 (1938): 30–37. I rely on a translation of this phrase, as per Takeba, ‘The Age of Modernism’, 150. For one such example from Takiguchi’s immediate circle, see Imai Shigeru, ‘Shururearizumu foto ni tai suru oboegaki’ [Surrealist Photography Memorandum], Foto taimusu 15, no. 10 (1938): 51–55. Hanawa, ‘Shashinga ni okeru chōgenjitsushugi no hatten’, 30–35. Ibid., 30–32.

12 13 14 Ibid., 34. 15 Dépaysement is referred to in a loanword as depeizuman and in Japanese translation as tenchihō (transposition), as in Ibid.

16 Ibid., 35. 17 Ibid., 32. 18 To some extent the relationship was also theorized by Surrealist painters. Writing in the October issue of Shashin bunka, Fukuzawa adopts a much more positive view of the relationship between photography and painting in general terms and does not see any difference in the use of individual artistic mediums for the practice of

Surrealism, as in Fukuzawa Ichirō, ‘Shashin no chōgenjitsushugi’ [Photographic Surrealism], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 3: Shūrurearisumu no shashin to hihyō [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 3: Surrealist Photography and Criticism], ed. Takeba Jō (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001).

19 John Clark, ‘Surrealism in Japan’, in Surrealism: Revolution by Night, ed. Michael Lloyd, Ted Gott and Christopher Chapman, exh. cat. (Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 1993), 210. 20 Ibid., 207. 21 ‘Zen’ei shashin zadankai’ [Avant-Garde Photography Symposium], Foto taimusu 15, no. 9 (1938): 8. 22 Ibid., 8–9. 23 Ibid., 14–17. 24 Nakajima Tokuhiro, ‘Shashin no “radikarusa”’ [‘Radicalism’ in Photography], in Yasui Nakaji shashinshū [Nakaji Yasui Photographer 1903–1942], ed. Yasui Nakaji et al. (Tokyo: Kyōdo Tsūshinsha, 2004), 243. 25 Takiguchi Shūzō, Letter to Roland Penrose, 23 December 1938. Written in English and held at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art Archive. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 A separate discussion of the exhibition of the Tanpei club among the members of the Tokyo club (Abe, Nagata, Takiguchi) is included in the same volume. 29 Hanawa Gingo, ‘Seibutsu shashinga no shinhatten’ [New Developments in Photographic Images of Still Life], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 3: Shūrurearisumu no shashin to hihyō [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 3: Surrealist Photography and Criticism], ed. Takeba Jō (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001). 30 Mitsuda Yuri, ‘Yasui Nakaji riarusa no hate – shashin ōgonki no kyojin’ [Yasui Nakaji, the End of Reality – Giant of Photography’s Golden Age], in Yasui Nakaji shashinshū [Nakaji Yasui Photographer 1903–1942], ed. Yasui Nakaji et al. (Tokyo: Kyōdo Tsūshinsha, 2004), 14–15. 31 Ibid., 15. 32 Ibid., 15. 33 Iizawa Kōtarō, ‘Dōjidaijin to shite no Yasui Nakaji’ [Nakaji Yasui: A Contemporary], translated by Tomoko Kozaki, in Yasui Nakaji shashin sakuhinshū [The Photography of Nakaji Yasui], ed. Yasui Nakaji, Iizawa Kōtarō and Kaneko Ryūichi (Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai, 2005), 7. 34 Mitsuda, ‘Yasui Nakaji’, 16. 35 Hanawa, ‘Seibutsu shashinga’, 218. The article also mentions other locations of joint shooting sessions – the beach and the editing desk – and includes the total of sixteen images, mostly by Japanese photographers. 36 Ibid., 221. 37 Ibid., 222. 38 Breton, Manifestoes, 255–278. 39 Ibid., 277–278. 40 For Imai, it was the best image in the show and for Takiguchi, it revealed a clear interest in (the Surrealist) objects, as per ‘Zen’ei shashin zadankai’, 23.

41 Ibid., 10.

42 Silvano Levy, ‘Paul Nougé Constructing Absence’, in Collective Inventions: Surrealism in Belgium, ed. Patricia Allmer and Hilde Van Gelder (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2007), 76–79. 43 Such inability of interpretation extends to the figure seen walking away in the distance, with some likelihood that its presence was accidental. 44 Katharine Conley, ‘Surrealism’s Ghostly Automatic Body’, Contemporary French and Francophone Studies 15, no. 3 (2011): 299. 45 As per Naniwa Shashin Kurabu kaihō [Newsletter of the Naniwa Photography Club] 1–7 (1938): 6–7. Other magazines include Kamera kurabu, Shashin saron and Shashin geppō.

46 Nakajima, ‘Shashin no “radikarusa”’, 240. 47 ‘Table of Contents’, Hōmu raifu 4, no. 7 (1938): unpaginated. 48 Claire Bishop, ‘Introduction: Viewers and Producers’, in Participation, ed. Claire Bishop (London: Whitechapel, 2006), 12. Walter Benjamin, ‘The Author as Producer: Address at the Institute for the Study of Fascism, Paris, April 27, 1934’, in Selected Writings Vol. 2 Part 2: 1931–1934, ed. Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland and

Gary Smith, translated by Rodney Livingstone and others (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005). 49 Bishop, ‘Introduction’, 11. 50 Eckersall, ‘From Liminality to Ideology’, 231. 51 Tezuka, Jikken Kōbō, 122–123. 52 Hanawa, ‘Seibutsu shashinga’, 220. 53 The album also includes Kawasaki Kametarō’s Sacred Torch. 54 Hal Foster, ‘Violation and Veiling in Surrealist Photography: Woman as Fetish, as Shattered Object, as Phallus’, in Surrealism: Desire Unbound, ed. Jenifer Mundy et al. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 206. 55 Hanawa, ‘Seibutsu shashinga’, 239. 56 Yamanaka Chirū, ‘Berumeeru no ningyō gensō’ [The Fantasy of Bellmer’s Dolls], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 6: Yamanka Chirū 1930 nendai no oruganaizā [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 6: Yamanaka Chirū, Organiser of the 1930s], ed. Kurosawa Yoshiteru (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 1999). 57 With ‘sadistic love’ referred to as sadisutikku na ai, in Ibid., 442. 58 Elza Adamowicz, Surrealist Collage in Text and Image: Dissecting the Exquisite Corpse (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 168. 59 Ibid., 160. 60 Ibid., 163–173. 61 Elza Adamowicz, ‘Hats or Jellyfish? Andre Breton’s Collages’, in André Breton: The Power of Language, ed. Ramona Fotiade (Exeter: Elm Bank, 2000), 93. See also André Breton, Break of Day, translated by Mark Polizzotti and Mary Ann Caws (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 48. 62 Adamowicz, Surrealist Collage, 167. 63 John W. Dover et al., The Brittle Decade: Visualizing Japan in the 1930s (Boston: MFA Publications, 2012), 23. The fascination with mannequins in photographic

practices in 1930s Japan can be evidenced outside of the particular session, with Nakayama Iwata as a prominent example. 64 See Michael Marra, ‘Coincidentia Oppositorium: The Greek Genealogies of Japan’, in Essays on Japan: Between Aesthetics and Literature (Leiden: Brill, 2010). 65 Tanpei Shashin Kurabu, Iizawa Kōtaro, Kaneko Ryūichi, Hikari [Light] (Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai, 2006), 151. 66 Yasui Nakaji, ‘Shashin no hattatsu to sono geijutsuteki shosō’ [Development of Photography and Its Artistic Aspects], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 3: Shūrurearisumu no shashin to hihyō [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 3: Surrealist

Photography and Criticism], ed. Takeba Jō (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001), 539. The highly politically charged atmosphere of this lecture, given in the year when Surrealists were arrested throughout the country, is described in Nakajima, ‘Shashin no “radikarusa”’, 245–247. This ladle-like teardrop was likely produced in of the image. Steven Harris, Surrealist Art and Thought in the 1930s: Art, Politics, and the Psyche (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 182. Dawn Ades, Dalí (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1992), 73. Harris, Surrealist Art and Thought, 274. Johanna Malt, Surrealist Objects of Desire: Surrealism, Fetishism, and Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 85. Ibid., 60. Harris, Surrealist Art and Thought, 180. Her name is written in Japanese as 岬洋子. Hanawa Gingo, ‘Mahiru no haru no yume’ [Dream of Spring in Broad Daylight],

postproduction

67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74

Kamera kurabu 3, no. 7 (1938): 42–44.

75 Ibid., 43. 76 For example, Hanawa suggests ‘a night guard on his routine inspection gets surprised to find a young girl’s head stuck in the factory’s chimney’, as per Ibid. 77 Michel Poivert, ‘Les images du dehors’, in La Subversion des images: surréalisme, photographie, film, ed. Quentin Bajac and Clément Chéroux, exh. cat. (Paris: Éditions du Centre Pompidou, 2009), 65.

78 Ibid. 79 The photographer is signed in the volume of the magazine as Ikemiya Seimei but no record exists of a photographer under that name. Another photograph of Misaki wearing the same attire appears in the February 1938 issue of Camera Art and the photographer is there signed as Ikemiya Seijirō.

80 The particular shadow contains another Easter egg as it directly borrows from Kurt Seligmann’s artwork that Hanawa brings up as an example of the Surrealist object in

‘New Developments’. 81 Hanawa, ‘Shashinga ni okeru zen’eiteki sakufū’, 26. The origin of this gesture is here accredited to a fellow artist Amagi Jun. 82 Matsuda Kazuko, Shururearisumu to ‘te’ [Surrealism and ‘Hand’] (Tokyo: Suiseisha, 2006), 18–19. See also Kirsten H. Powell, ‘Hands-On Surrealism’, Art History 20, no. 4 (1997): 531.

83 T.Y, ‘Geijutsu to yūmoa ni kansuru nōto’ [Notes concerning Art and Humour], Mizue 401, no. 7 (1938): 7–10. Takiguchi Shūzō, ‘Chōgenjitsushugi no shōzō shashin: Rondon de dairyūkō’ [Surrealist Portrait Photography, A Major Trend in London], Foto taimusu 15, no. 9 (1938): 35–37.

84 Ishii, ‘“Zen’ei” ga kagayaita kisetsu’, 63. 85 Jeffrey Gilbert, ‘The Modern Photography Movement in Japan’, in Nihon shashin zenshū 3: Kindai shashin no gunzō [Complete Collection of Photography in Japan 3: The Modern Photography Movement in Japan], ed. Kuwahara Kineo et al. (Tokyo:

Shōgakkan, 1986), 186. 86 ‘Sekaiichi no dokushinsha – Adorufu Hittorā’ [Number One Bachelor of the World: Adolf Hitler], Foto taimusu 15, no. 4 (1938): 22. 87 ‘“Deutch land” no shōkai’ [Introducing ‘Deutschland’], Foto taimusu 15, no. 4 (1938): 56. 88 Richie, ‘Foreword’, xxv. 89 As per Matei Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kistch, Postmodernism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1974), 117. 90 Eckersall, ‘From Liminality to Ideology’, 233–234. 91 Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano, Nippon Modern: Japanese Cinema of the 1920s and 1930s (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008), 13. 92 Ghislaine Wood, Surreal Things: Surrealism and Design (London: V&A Publications, 2007), 30. 93 Esther Leslie, Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory and the Avant-Garde (London: Verso, 2004), 145. For the ideological mobilization of antique sculpture in Japan of that time, see Michael Lucken, ‘Aphrodite dans le Soleil levant: Images de la Grèce antiques dans le Japon en guerre 1937–1945’, in La Guerre et les Arts, ed.

Jean Baechler (Paris, Hermann: 2018). 94 ‘Schönheit im Olympischen Kampf, Sekai no wakamono no shukusai! Doitsu ga tsukutta orimupikku jojishi’ [Schönheit im Olympischen Kampf, Festival of World’s Youth! Epic Poetry of the Olympic Games Organised by Germany], Foto taimusu 15, no. 5 (1938): 20–25. 95 Another propaganda feature run by Asahi Camera in March 1939 across six pages is relevant to note. Titled ‘Hitler and Young Girls’ [Hitorā to shōnen shōjō], it includes several photographs of young sympathizers of NSDAP saluting Hitler at a rally, taken by Heinrich Hoffmann. 96 Clark, ‘Abstract Subjectivity’, 48–50. 97 Rachael Hutchinson, Negotiating Censorship in Modern Japan (London: Routledge, 2013), 6.

Chapter 4 1

Salvador Dalí, The Collected Writings of Salvador Dalí, translated and edited by Haim Finkelstein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 234–235.

2

Michael Stone-Richards, ‘Failure and Community: Preliminary Questions on the Political in the Culture of Surrealism’, in Surrealism, Politics and Culture, ed.

Raymond Spiteri and Donald LaCoss (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003), 303.

3

Takiguchi Shūzō (trans.), ‘Shururearisumu no jikken ni arawareta taishō’ (Saruvadooru Dari) [The Object as Revealed in Surrealist Experiment (Salvador Dalí)], in Korekushon Takiguchi Shūzō 11, Senzen senchū hen I: 1926–1936 [Collection Takiguchi Shūzō 11, Prewar and War Period 1, 1926–1936], ed. Takiguchi Shūzō,

Ōoka Makoto et al. (Tokyo: Misuzu Shobō, 1991), 415–425. 4 5

Takiguchi Shūzō, ‘Au Japon’, Cahiers d’art 7–10 (1935): 132.

Ibid. The use of the ‘hiding characters’ (fuseji) was an established practice of self-censorship, in which black dots would hide words and phrases anticipated to

6 7

cause attention from the state censors, as in Jay Rubin, Injurious to Public Morals: Writers and the Meiji State (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1984), 29–31. For further discussion of this practice in 1930s Japan, see William O. Gardner, ‘Avant-Garde Literature and the New City: Tokyo 1923–1931’ (PhD diss., Stanford University, 1999), 23. Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism, 255–278. Yamanaka Chirū, ‘OBJET SURRÉALISTE no mondai’ [The Problem of the Surrealist Object], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 6: Yamanaka Chirū, 1930 nendai no oruganaizā [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 6: Yamanaka Chirū, Organiser of the 1930s], ed. Kurosawa Yoshiteru (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 1999).

8

As: XX ni hōshi suru shururearisurmu, in Ibid., 350. The two ‘X’ marks are probably replacing two ideograms for the word ‘revolution’ in Japanese, referred to as kakumei. Yamanaka’s translation of Breton’s and Èluard’s L’Immaculée conception

9 10

11 12 13

(1930), published by Bon Shoten in 1937 as Dōteijo jutai, was censored more explicitly, with pages torn from the publication. Dalí, The Collected Writings, 231–234. Yamanaka, ‘OBJET SURRÉALISTE’, 351. Yamanaka Chirū, ‘Buttai no kakumei: Obuje shururearisuto no ichi’ [Object Revolution: Position of the Surrealist Object], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 6: Yamanaka Chirū, 1930 nendai no oruganaizā [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 6: Yamanaka Chirū, Organiser of the 1930s], ed. Kurosawa Yoshiteru (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 1999). Ibid., 388–389. For the first part of the text that Yamanaka translated, see Dalí, The Collected Writings, 231–232. Ibid., 392. This argument echoes Breton’s ‘Crisis of the Object’ (1936), as per Breton, Surrealism and Painting, 276. The images were all featured in the Cahiers d’art in 1935 and 1936 editions, with the only exception of Bellmer’s work titled as Composition (Konpojishon) that is not included in these two volumes.

14 Yamanaka Chirū, ‘Cheko ni okeru futari no gaka’ [Two Czech Painters], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 6: Yamanaka Chirū, 1930 nendai no oruganaizā

[Collection of Surrealism in Japan 6: Yamanaka Chirū, Organiser of the 1930s], ed. Kurosawa Yoshiteru (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 1999). 15 Ibid., 397. As per Breton, What Is Surrealism?, 226. 16 Ibid. 17 In former Yugoslavia, for instance, where communist tendencies were under similar suppression during the 1930s, the very mention of the word ‘revolution’ would

result in confiscation of the entire run of the publication, as per Dejan Sretenović,

Urnebesni Kliker: Umetnost i Politika Beogradskog Nadrealizma [The Frenzied Marble: Art and Politics of Belgrade Surrealism] (Belgrade: Službeni glasnik, 2016), 202. The comparison with Belgrade group is here pertinent, as it uniquely stopped functioning in 1932 for the stronger support for Aragonian over Bretonian tendency.

18 Harris, Surrealist Art and Thought in the 1930s, 138. 19 Ibid., 143–155. 20 Simon Baker, ‘Psychologie des Foules: Surrealism and the Impossible Object’, in Sculpture and Psychoanalysis, ed. Brandon Taylor (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006), 46. 21 Ibid, 45. 22 Dalí, The Collected Writings, 235. 23 Shimozato Yoshio, ‘Niko no tēma ni yorite’ [Two Themes], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 14: Ei-Kyū, Shimozato Yoshio, renzu no avangyarudo [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 14: Ei-Kyū, Shimozato Yoshio, Avant-Garde of the Lens], ed. Yamada Satoshi (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001). 24 Ibid., 260. 25 Iida, Rethinking Identity in Modern Japan, 23. 26 Shimozato, ‘Niko no tēma’, 260. 27 Takiguchi Shūzō, ‘Buttai to shashin tokuni shururearisumu no obuje ni tsuite’ [Object and Photography, Especially the Surrealist Object], Foto taimusu 15, no. 8 (1938): 64. 28 Ibid., 66. The categories listed include natural, savage, mathematical, found, disaster, readymade, mobile and symbolical objects. 29 Ibid., 68. Takiguchi tells a story of how Paul Nash reused as an object a sail of the Britannia yacht purchased at an auction by Nan Kivell. As in Yamanaka’s previous

article, images in Takiguchi’s text are also sourced from the 1936 issue of Cahiers d’art (for Man Ray and Eileen Agar) but also include two Nash’s photographs. 30 Ibid. 31 Morita Hajime, ‘Obujekō tenbyōfū ni’ [A Sketch for Thoughts about Objects], in Nihon Obuje 1920–1970 nendai danshō [Japanese Object, Fragments of the Decades between 1920–1970], ed. Morita Hajime et al., exh. cat. (Tokyo: Bijutsukan Renraku Kyōgikai, 2012), 27. 32 In ‘New Developments’ (September 1938), for instance, Hanawa refers the reader with more interest in the Surrealist object to Takiguchi’s article as a text of crucial importance, as in Hanawa, ‘Seibutsu shashinga no shinhatten’, 221. 33 Koishi Kiyoshi, ‘Kamikōchi kamera kikō’ [Record of a Camera Trip to Kamikōchi], Foto taimusu 15, no. 10 (1938): 44–50. 34 Fire Mountain, Nagata’s later rendition of one of Abe’s photographs is discussed in Chapter 2. 35 Comparison to Nash’s practice becomes more pressing here, as the photographs are compellingly similar to the artist’s collection published in 1946 as the Monster Field. Nash had ‘discovered’ two enormous elm trees uprooted by lightning while visiting friends in Gloucestershire in June 1938, only a month before the excursion took place. The Monster Field, not shown or exhibited prior to October 1940, might

have been informed by the Czech Surrealists Štyrský and Toyen, who showed works inspired by natural objects at the Surrealist exhibition in London in 1936, as in Walker,

So Exotic, So Homemade, 25. Yamanaka’s article on the two Czech artists from March 1937 also includes four untitled reproductions of their work, two per each artist, as in Yamanaka, ‘Cheko ni okeru futari no gaka’. For two of these photographs, see also Vítézslav Nezval, ‘Strysky.Toyen’, Cahiers d’art 7–10 (1935): 135.

36 Abe Yoshifumi, ‘Obuje no aru Yakedake’ [Object Potential of Mount Yake], Foto taimusu 15, no. 10 (1938): 39.

37 Ibid., 41. 38 Ibid., 42. 39 Walter Benjamin, ‘Small History of Photography’, in On Photography, edited and translated by Esther Leslie (London: Reaktion Books, 2016). Roger Rothman, Tiny Surrealism: Salvador Dalí and the Aesthetics of the Small (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012), 45.

40 Abe Yoshifumi, ‘Zen’eiteki hōkō e no ichikōsatsu’ [A Study in Avant-Garde Methods], Foto taimusu 15, no. 7 (1938): 62. The article is dated 25 May 1938, and therefore

precedes the excursion to Mount Yake but the image was likely added after the initial submission of the text. 41 Ibid., 63. 42 Abe Yoshifumi, ‘Zen’eiteki hōkō hito e no ichikōsatsu, 60 pēji no tsuzuki’ [A Study in Avant-Garde Methods, Continuing from Page 60], Foto taimusu 15, no. 7 (1938): 105. 43 ‘Zen’ei shashin saikentō zadankai’ [Round Table Meeting Rethinking Avant-Garde Photography], Kameraman, February Edition (1939): 17–29. 44 Ibid., 18. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid., 20. Sakata supports his arguments with different examples, illustrations of which also accompany the text: photographs by Moholy-Nagy, Man Ray and

himself as showing ‘pure’ abstraction and by Dora Maar, Raul Ubac, Bellmer, Ei-Kyū and himself as indicating a ‘pure Surrealist practice and Freudianism’. Reproductions of Dalí’s Suburbs of a Paranoiac-Critical Town: Afternoon on the Outskirts of European History (1935) and Mondrian’s Composition (1921) also accompany the text. 47 Ibid., 19–20. 48 Sakata Minoru, Kashokuteki dōbutsuteki na deido [Edible, Animal Mud], Foto taimusu 16, no. 2 (1939): unpaginated. 49 ‘Zen’ei shashin’, 21. The passage reads: ‘The way I think about the two is that they are psychologically completely opposite. Abstraction elevates all its components to the level of plasticity whereas Surrealism observes everything psychologically. They appear to me as the West and the East. However, as Yamanaka observed earlier,

they are surprisingly easily fused within an artwork. Truthfully speaking, I have not thought about this more deeply than that; on the contrary, it comes very easy that an abstract form reveals a psychological content in my work. Reality is like that as well.’ 50 Dalí, The Collected Writings, 193–200. Dalí suggests an animate character of Art Nouveau architecture by juxtaposing photographic details of Hector Guimard’s buildings with captions reading ‘Eat me!’.

51 ‘Surrealist psychology means Freud’s psychoanalysis. It requires thinking about objects (mono) in a Freudian manner’, as in ‘Zen’ei shashin’, 21. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid., 22. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid., 23. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid., 24. 58 Ibid., 30. 59 The conversation indicates that the images were also viewed at the meeting, together with volumes of the Abstraction-Création magazine. 60 Dalí describes four stages through which the Surrealist object evolved: ‘1. The object exists outside us, without our taking part in it; 2. The object assumes the immovable shape of our desire and acts upon our contemplation; 3. The object is movable and such that it can be acted upon; 4. The object tends to bring about our fusion with it and makes us pursue the formation of a unity with it,’ as in Dalí, The Collected Writings, 243–244. 61 ‘Zen’ei shashin’, 27.

62 63 64 65 66

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 27. Ibid. In the notes accompanying a reprinted version of this text, the editor blames the

moderators for expressing their own views too frequently and not leading the discussion to a more conclusive end, as per Yamada Satoshi (ed.), Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 14: Ei-Kyū, Shimozato Yoshio, renzu no avangyarudo [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 14: Ei-Kyū, Shimozato Yoshio, Avant-Garde of the Lens] (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001), 316. 67 ‘Zen’ei shashin’, 24. 68 Interestingly, Koishi reports that Sakata also had an intention of joining them on the excursion, only to be withheld at the last moment, as per Koishi, ‘Kamikōchi kamera kikō’, 55. 69 The same conceptual coding of Surrealist terminology includes the very term ‘Surrealism’, often addressed in the texts of the time in an abbreviated form shūru from the loanword shūrurearizumu. Such reworking of the word can be understood

in comparison to a wide application of the word ‘surreal’ in English. However, in Japanese, the word shūru does not have a different meaning but indicates a more intimate, personal relationship with a word of a foreign origin to a Japanese reader, as in Akasegawa Genpei and Minami Shinbō, ‘Chōgenjitsushugiteki konnyaku mondō’ [Questions and Answers about Surrealist konnyaku Foodstuff], Geijutsu shinchō, February Edition (2011): 58.

70 Stone-Richards, ‘Failure and Community’, 318. 71 Iida, Rethinking Identity in Modern Japan, 59.

72 Ibid., 65. 73 Kohara Masashi (ed.), Fuji genkei: Kindai Nihon to Fuji no yama [Visions of Fuji: An Incurable Malady of Modern Japan], exh. cat. (Nagaizumi-chō, Shizuoka-ken: Izu Photo Museum, 2011). As this exhibition affirmed, the mountain was ascribed with different symbolic values throughout the twentieth century. 74 This collaboration is described in detail in Shimozato’s diary notes, as per Yamada, Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 14, 307–308. 75 Shimozato Yoshio, Mesemu zoku: Chōgenjitsushugi shashin shū [Mesemb Genus, Collection of Surrealist Photographs] (Nagoya: Self-published, 1940), unpaginated. I discuss the relationship between the austere layout of the volume and the

Surrealist preference for a similar type of scientific publications in Jelena Stojkovic, ‘Systematic Confusion and the Total Discredit of the World of Reality: Surrealism and Photography in Japan of the 1930s’, in Minor Photography: Connecting Deleuze and Guattari to Photography Theory, ed. Mieke Bleyen (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2012), 177. 76 For translation of this section of the book, refer to Jelena Stojkovic, ‘Language of Light: Legacy of Surrealism in 1930s Japanese Photography’ (MA diss., School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 2009).

77 Shimozato, Mesemu zoku, unpaginated. 78 Ibid. In terms of the enlarged size of the cactus, he asserts how it is not unusual to him, as he has seen it as such in his dreams many times. 79 Shimozato makes sure to especially thank Sakata in the commentary, as per Ibid. 80 Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927–1939, translated by Allan Stoekl (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), 14. 81 Dawn Ades, ‘Little Things: Close-Up in Photo and Film 1839–1963’, in Close-Up: Proximity and Defamiliarization in Art, Film and Photography, ed. Dawn Ades and Simon Baker, exh. cat. (Edinburgh: Fruitmarket Gallery, 2008), 32. 82 Elza Adamowicz, ‘Exquisite Excrement: The Bataille-Breton Polemic’, Aurifex 2 (2003): unpaginated. 83 Ibid. 84 Diary note made in November 1936, as in Yamada, Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 14, 306. The only natural objects in this issue of the magazine that could be regarded as related to Shimozato’s project in formalist terms are found objects collected by Ernst, resembling some of the later shots of the Mesemb, such as A Balloon. 85 Shimozato Yoshio, ‘“L’art non-figuratif” kaisetsu’ [Explanation of ‘NonFigurative Art’], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 14: Ei-Kyū, Shimozato Yoshio, renzu no avangyarudo [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 14: Ei-Kyū, Shimozato

Yoshio, Avant-Garde of the Lens], ed. Yamada Satoshi (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001). 86 Ibid., 255. 87 Ibid. 88 Shimozato Yoshio, ‘Chūshōha no tenkai: Shūrureyarisumu to no kōryū ni tsuite’ [Development of Abstraction, Exchange with Surrealism], in Korekushon Nihon

shūrurearisumu 14: Ei-Kyū, Shimozato Yoshio, renzu no avangyarudo [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 14: Ei-Kyū, Shimozato Yoshio, Avant-Garde of the Lens], ed. Yamada Satoshi (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001), 257. 89 Ibid, 257. Okamoto wrote about his life in Paris during the 1930s on many occasions. For a detailed description of the period, see Okamoto Tarō, ‘Pari no nakama tachi’ [Paris Friends], in Okamoto Tarō chosakushū, 2: Kuroi Taiyō

[Okamoto Tarō Collection, 2: Dark Sun] (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1980). According to this text, he was the youngest member of the Abstraction-Création when he joined the group aged twenty-one in 1932, three years after his arrival to Paris. In the same text he recounts his admiration for and a close friendship with Arp, as well as anecdotes involving Victor Brauner and Leonor Fini, among others. At the time of the letter, Okamoto had already been more inclined towards Surrealism for

several years. 90 Briony Fer, On Abstract Art (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 59. 91 Walter Benjamin, ‘Letter from Paris [2]: Painting and Photography’, in Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, Volume 3, 1935–1938, ed. Howard Eiland and

Michael W. Jennings, translated by Edmund Japhcott, Howard Eiland, and Others (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002), 243. 92 Shimozato Yoshio, ‘Chōgenjitsu kaiga to sutairu’ [Surrealist Painting and Style], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 14: Ei-Kyū, Shimozato Yoshio, renzu no avangyarudo [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 14: Ei-Kyū, Shimozato Yoshio, Avant-Garde of the Lens], ed. Yamada Satoshi (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001). 93 Shimozato describes the style developed by Dalí as ‘photographic’ and gives examples of abstraction as embraced by such artists as Miró, Arp and Tanguy in Ibid. For his study of the specific artists, together with Magritte, see Shimozato Yoshio, ‘Chōgenjitsu kaiga no hōhō’ [Methods in Surrealist Painting], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 14: Ei Kyū, Shimozato Yoshio, renzu no avangyarudo

94 95 96 97

[Collection of Surrealism in Japan 14: Ei Kyū, Shimozato Yoshio, Avant-Garde of the Lens], ed. Yamada Satoshi (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001). Tsukahara Fumi, Setsudan suru bigaku: Avangyarudo geijutsu shisōshi [Cutting Edge Avant-Garde – History of Thought of Avant-Garde Art] (Tokyo: Ronsōsha, 2013), 301–303. Takiguchi Shūzō, ‘Shokubutsu no kiroku’ [Recording Plants], Foto taimusu 16, no. 1 (1939): 57–61. Shimozato makes a diary note that he has a meeting with Takiguchi in this regard on 15 March 1939, as per Yamada, Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 14, 309. Takiguchi Shūzō, ‘Shimozato Yoshio hencho “Mesemu zoku” ni tsuite’ [Mesemb Genus, Authored and Edited by Shimozato Yoshio], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 14: Ei-Kyū, Shimozato Yoshio, renzu no avangyarudo [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 14: Ei-Kyū, Shimozato Yoshio, Avant-Garde of the Lens], ed.

Yamada Satoshi (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001), 253. 98 Ibid. 99 Takiguchi Shūzō, ‘Nazo no sōzōsha: Sarubadōru Dari’ [Salvador Dali, Creator of Riddles], in Korekushon Takiguchi Shūzō 13, Senzen senchū hen III: 1939–1944

[Collection Takiguchi Shūzō 13, Prewar and War Period 3, 1939–1944], ed. Takiguchi Shūzõ, Ōoka Makoto et al. (Tokyo: Misuzu Shobō, 1995).

100 Ōtani Shōgo and Yamada Satoshi, ‘1930 nendai Dari būmu no shinsō, Taidan: Yamada Satoshi x Ōtani Shōgo’ [The Truth about the Dalí Boom in the 1930s, Cross Talk: Yamada Satoshi x Ōtani Shōgo], Bijutsu techō 68, no. 1043 (October 2016): 80–85.

101 Shogo Otani, ‘Dreams of the Horizon – Introduction’, translated by Ogawa Kikuko, in Chiheisen no yume: Shōwa 10 nendai no gensō kaiga [Dreams of the Horizon: Fantastic Paintings in Japan 1935–1945], ed. Tōkyō Kokuritsu Kindai Bijutsukan,

Ōtani Shōgo, exh. cat. (Tokyo: Tōkyō Kokuritsu Kindai Bijutsukan, 2003), 21. 102 Rothman, Tiny Surrealism, 56–62. 103 I rely on Ogawa’s translation of this paragraph, as per Otani, ‘Dreams of the Horizon’, 20. 104 Ibid., 22. 105 Ibid., 23. 106 Shimozato, Mesemu zoku, unpaginated. The size of the album is 46.2 x 32.8 cm. 107 Ibid.

Chapter 5 1The navy and the air forces had their separate artistic collectives. For a detailed overview, see Maki Kaneko, 'New Art Collectives in the Service of the War: The Formation of Art Organizations during the Asia-Pacific War', positions: east as/a no. 2 (2013): 309-350.

cultures critique 21,

2 Jiro et al., Yoshihara Jird ten: Seitan 100nen kinen [Jird Yoshihara: A Yoshihara Centenary Retrospective] exh. cat. (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 2005), 109. 'Shashin Zokei Kenkyukai ni tsuite: Photo Experiment Group' [Photo Plasticity 3 Research Association: Photo Experiment Group], Foto taimusu 16, no. 4 (1939): 28. Roxana 4 Marcoci et al., The Original Copy: Photography of Sculpture, 1839 to Today, exh. cat. (New York: New York Museum of Modern Art, 2010), 11. 5 'Shashin Zokei Kenkyukai ni tsuite', 333. Takiguchi Shuzo (trans.), 'Kindai zokei geijutsu (Jiideion Uerukaa)' [Modern Plastic Art (Carola Giedion-Welcker)], in Takiguchi Shuzo, Ooka Makoto et al., Korekushon

Takiguchi Shuzo 12, Senzen senchu hen II: 1937-1938 [Collection Takiguchi Shuzo 12, Prewar and War Period 2, 1937-1939] (Tokyo: Misuzu Shobo, 1993). 7 207. ibid., Jo explains the word to be inspired by its use in Bauhaus, but not having Takeba 8 an exact equivalent in English as it stands for 'any manner of image creation' that

was

'free of the dangerous, foreign connotations of both avant-garde and as in Takeba, 'The Age of Modernism', 153.

Surrealism' at the time,

9 Shuzo, 'Zokei shashin koenkai no kiroku yori' [Report Takiguchi Plastic Photography], Foto taimusu 16, no. 5 (1939): 95.

10

ibid., 93. 11 95. Ibid.,

on

a Lecture about

12 Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis, The Language of Psychoanalysis (New York: W.W. Norton, 1973), 317–318. 13 Takiguchi, ‘Zōkei shashin kōenkai’, 95. For a definition of fantasy as a ‘matter of staging’, see Victor Burgin, ‘Fantasy’, in Feminism and Psychoanalysis: A Critical Dictionary, ed. Elizabeth Wright (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 85. 14 Takiguchi, ‘Zōkei shashin kōenkai’, 95. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 Takiguchi Shūzō (trans.), ‘Foto Montaaju (Baabara Moogan)’ [Photomontage (Barbara Morgan)], in Takiguchi Shūzō, Ōoka Makoto et al., Korekushon Takiguchi Shūzō 13, Senzen senchū hen III: 1939–1944 [Collection Takiguchi Shūzō 13, Prewar and War Period 3, 1939–1944] (Tokyo: Misuzu Shobō, 1995). 18 Takiguchi Shūzō, ‘Jikkenteki shashinka to shite no Mohori Nagii’ [Moholy-Nagy, An Experimental Photographer], Foto taimusu 15, no. 9 (1938): 41–48. For a later text, see Takiguchi Shūzō, ‘Zōkei kunren to shashin’ [Training in Plasticity and Photography], in Takiguchi Shūzō, Ōoka Makoto et al., Korekushon Takiguchi Shūzō 13, Senzen senchū hen III: 1939–1944 [Collection Takiguchi Shūzō 13, Prewar and

War Period 3, 1939–1944] (Tokyo: Misuzu Shobō, 1995). 19 Takiguchi Shūzō, ‘Mohori Nagii kara no tegami sono ta’ [A Letter from Moholy-Nagy and Other], Foto taimusu 17, no. 1 (1940): 22–23. 20 Takiguchi, ‘Zōkei shashin kōenkai’, 95. 21 Sakata Minoru, ‘Foto abusutorakushon to Foto shururearizumu’ (1–3), [Photo Abstraction and Photo Surrealism (1–3)], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 3: Shūrurearisumu no shashin to hihyō [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 3: Surrealist Photography and Criticism], ed. Takeba Jō (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001). See also Sakata Minoru, ‘Foto abusutorakushon to Foto shururearizumu’ (4) [Photo Abstraction and Photo Surrealism (4)], Shashin geppō, March Edition (1938): 45–51.

22 Sakata, ‘Foto abusutorakushon to Foto shururearizumu’ (1–3) 115. 23 Sakata Minoru, Zōkei shashin 1934–1941: Sakata Minoru sakuhinshū [Structure in Photography: Minoru Sakata’s Anthology] (Nagoya: Arumu, 1988), 164. 24 Sakata Minoru, ‘“Chōgenjitsushugi shashin” [fotoshūrearisumu] to “Chūshōzōei” [fotoabusutorakushon] no gutaiteki na kaisetsu 1, 2’ [A Basic Explanation of ‘Photo-Surrealism’ and ‘Photo-Abstraction’ 1, 2], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 3: Shūrurearisumu no shashin to hihyō [Collection of Surrealism

in Japan 3: Surrealist Photography and Criticism], ed. Takeba Jō (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001). 25 Ibid., 351. 26 Ibid., 355–356. 27 Ibid., 357–358. 28 Ibid. Sakata makes the same comment at the Nagoya meeting, as per ‘Zen’ei shashin’, 20.

29 Ibid., 359–360. 30 Ibid., 360.

31 Vilém Flusser’s notion of ‘technical images’ is a significant force in the contemporary photographic discourse in this sense. See, for instance, Vilém Flusser, Towards a Philosophy of Photography (London: Reaktion, 2014). 32 In his study of abstract photography Lyle Rexer identifies exactly the same modes of practice as crucial: Lyle Rexer, The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography (New York: Aperture, 2009), 9.

33 Ian Parker, Japan in Analysis: Cultures of the Unconscious (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 27–30.

34 Ōtsuji Kenji, ‘Furoido to kindai kaiga’ [Freud and Modern Painting], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 2: Shūrurearisumu no bijutsu to hihyō [Collection of

Surrealism in Japan 2: Surrealist Art and Criticism], ed. Omuka Toshiharu (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001). 35 Ibid., 132. 36 Takiguchi Shūzō, ‘Furoitoshugi to gendai geijutsu’ [Freudianism and Contemporary Art], in Takiguchi Shūzō, Ōoka Makoto et al., Korekushon Takiguchi Shūzō 13, Senzen senchū hen III: 1939–1944 [Collection Takiguchi Shūzō 13, Prewar and War Period 3, 1939–1944] (Tokyo: Misuzu Shobō, 1995). Takiguchi notes how other psychoanalysts such as Pierre Janet understood unconscious to be relevant to art even before Freud, as in Ibid., 245–247. 37 Takiguchi Shūzō, ‘Saruvadoru Dari no keitaigaku’ [Salvador Dalí’s Morphology], Mizue 400 (1938): 13–16. 38 Ibid., 13–14. 39 Salvador Dalí, ‘Interprétation paranoïaque-critique de l’image obsédante “L’Angélus” de Millet’, Minotaure 1 (1933): 65–67. Dr Lacan, ‘Le problème du style et les formes paranoïaques de l’expérience’, Minotaure 1 (1933): 68–69. 40 Salvador Dalí, ‘Les nouvelles coulers du sex appeal spectral’, Minotaure 5 (1934): 20–21. Takiguchi writes about Minotaure in the February 1935 issue of Serupan, comparing it to the earlier Documents and complementing its abundance of

photographic reproductions, as per Takiguchi Shūzō, ‘Minotaure’, in Takiguchi Shūzō, Ōoka Makoto et al., Korekushon Takiguchi Shūzō 11, Senzen senchū hen I: 1926–1936 [Collection Takiguchi Shūzō 11, Prewar and War Period 1, 1926–1936] (Tokyo: Misuzu Shobō, 1991). 41 Takiguchi, ‘Nazo no sōzōsha’, 13. 42 Ibid., 12. 43 Ibid., 13–15. 44 As early as in 1931, for instance, Koga Harue notes how in its unique relation to reality, Surrealism offers a mechanism for exploration of the unconscious, as in Koga Harue, ‘Chōgenjitsushugi shikan’ [Une approache du surréalisme], translated by Věra Linhartová, in Japon des Avant Gardes, 1910–1970: Exposition, ed. Centre Georges Pompidou, exh. cat. (Paris: Éditions du Centre Pompidou, 1986), 159. 45 Yamanaka Chirū (trans.), ‘Kusatta roba (Saruvadooru Dari)’ [Rotting Donkey (Salvador Dalí)], Mizue 394 (1937): 13–17. 46 Yamanaka Chirū, ‘Furansu kaiga no zen’ei, Sarubadoru Dari no ichi’ [French Avant-Garde Painting, The Position of Salvador Dalí], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 6: Yamanaka Chirū, 1930 nendai no oruganaizā [Collection of

Surrealism in Japan 6: Yamanaka Chirū, Organiser of the 1930s], ed. Kurosawa Yoshiteru (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 1999), 348. Yamanaka does not refer to La femme visible (1930), the first compilation of Dalí’s texts in which the paranoiaccritical method was elaborated, but instead seems to be usingMinotaure as a

source literature, similar to Takiguchi. 47 Ibid. In terms of Dalí’s work through which the method was worked through, The Lugubrious Game was seen in Japan at the Chōgenjitsushugi Kaigai Sakuhin ten in photographic reproduction, together with a sample of Dalí’s illustrations for the 1934 edition of Comte de Lautréamont’s Le Chants de Maldoror (1868–1869). 48 Fiona Bradley, ‘Dalí as a Myth-Maker: The Tragic Myth of Millet’s Angelus’, in Salvador Dalí: A Mythology, ed. Dawn Ades and Fiona Bradley (London: Tate Gallery, 1998), 16. 49 Rothman, Tiny Surrealism, 129. 50 Ibid. 51 For how this discussion developed with regard to Dalí’s illustrations for the 1934 edition of Lautréamont’s Le Chants de Maldoror, see David Lomas, The Haunted Self: Surrealism, Psychoanalysis, Subjectivity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 163–164. 52 Dalí, The Collected Writings, 223. 53 Nagoya-shi Bijutsukan, Nihon no shūrurearisumu: 1925–1945, 145. 54 Takiguchi Shūzō, ‘Kazari mado no aru tenrankai’ [An Exhibition with a Show Window Potential], in Nihon no shūrurearisumu: 1925–1945 [Surrealism in Japan: 1925– 1945], ed. Nagoya-shi Bijutsukan, exh. cat. (Nagoya: Nihon no Shūrurearisumuten Jikkō Iinkai, 1990). 55 Ibid., 149. 56 Ibid. 57 Ades, ‘Little Things’, 52. 58 Brassaï and Salvador Dalí, ‘Sculptures Involontaires’, Minotaure 3–4 (1933): 68. 59 Simon Baker, ‘Watch Out for Life: The Conceptual Close-Up 1920–1960’, in CloseUp: Proximity and Defamiliarization in Art, Film and Photography, ed. Dawn Ades

and Simon Baker, exh. cat. (Edinburgh: Fruitmarket Gallery, 2008), 94. 60 For an example of writing about Magritte at the time, see Takiguchi Shūzō, ‘Rune Maguritto’ [René Magritte], Mizue 414 (1939): 4–8.

61 Simon O’Sullivan, ‘From Stuttering and Stammering to the Diagram: Towards a Minor Art Practice?’, in Minor Photography: Connecting Deleuze and Guattari to Photography Theory, ed. Mieke Bleyen (Leuven: Leuven University Press,

2012), 9. 62 Ibid., 6–7. 63 Iida, Rethinking Identity in Modern Japan, 43. 64 Dalí, The Collected Writings, 302–306. 65 For an example of one of such Dalí’s obsessions, see Salvador Dalí, The Tragic Myth of Millet’s Angelus: Paranoiac-Critical Interpretation including the Myth of William Tell, translated by Eleanor R. Morse (St. Petersburg: Salvador Dali Museum,

1986), 74.

66 Takahashi Wataru, ‘Tsū kansho’ [Two Impressions], Kameraman, June Edition (1938): 24–26. 67 Ibid., 25. 68 Sakata, Zōkei shashin, 164. 69 For details about the exchange between the clubs in Osaka and Fukuoka, see Nakajima, ‘Shashin no “radikarusa”’, 243. See also Fukuoka-shi Bijutsukan (ed.), Soshiete Irufu: Kyōdo no zen’ei shashinka tachi [Avant-Garde Photographers in Fukuoka: Société Irf], exh. cat. (Fukuoka: Fukuoka-shi Bijutsukan, 1988), 4. 70 Ōtani, Dreams of the Horizon, 22. In reference to Takiguchi Shūzō, ‘Fukuzawa Ichirō ron’ [On Ichiro Fukuzawa], Mizue 560 (1950): 33. I rely on Ogawa Kikuko’s translation of Takiguchi’s quote provided in this text. 71 Ibid., 22. For such a reading of Dalí’s painting, see Malt, Surrealist Objects of Desire, 180–189. 72 Ōtani, Dreams of the Horizon, 26. 73 Dawn Ades, ‘Dalí’s Optical Illusions’, in Dalí’s Optical Illusions, ed. Dawn Ades (Hartford: Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, 2000), 18. 74 Ibid., 19. 75 Ibid., 20. 76 Ibid. The relevance of Bataille’s notion of ‘formless’ in (Western) contemporary art is famously explored in Yves-Alain Bois and Rosalind Krauss (eds.), Formless: A User’s Guide, exh. cat. (New York: Zone Books, 1999). 77 Inagaki Taizō, Touching and Feeling at Night and Tajima Tsugio, Bad Omen, Foto taimusu 16, no. 7 (1939): unpaginated (Yamanaka). 78 Shimozato Yoshio, Decision, Foto taimusu 16, no. 11 (1939): unpaginated (Sakata Minoru). 79 Tajima Tsugio, Beautiful Fissure, Foto taimusu 16, no. 3 (1939): unpaginated (Takiguchi Shūzō). 80 Yamanaka Chirū, ‘Sakata Minoru no sakuhin’ [Sakata Minoru’s Artworks], Shashin saron, January Edition (1939): 48–51. 81 Ibid., 48–49. Yamanaka even stresses how those photographers who would like to practise Surrealism should ‘love their cameras more’, as in Ibid., 48. 82 Sakata Minoru, ‘Zen’ei shashin sakuhin no gijutsuteki na kaisetsu’ [The Technological Explanation of Avant-Garde Photography], Photo Times 15, no. 12 (1938): 58–64. Flowing Eyeball also accompanies this text. 83 Sakata Minoru, ‘Sakuga gihō tanaoroshi chō’ (1) [Inventory Notebook of a Picture Making Process], Foto taimusu 16, no. 4 (1939): 71–76. Sakata Minoru, ‘Sakuga gihō tanaoroshi chō’ (2) [Inventory Notebook of a Picture Making Process], Foto taimusu 16, no. 5 (1939): 55–60. Sakata Minoru, ‘Sakuga gihō tanaoroshi chō’ (3) [Inventory Notebook of a Picture Making Process], Foto taimusu 16, no. 7 (1939):

41–44. I discuss this body of work in detail in Jelena Stojkovic, ‘Sakata Minoru’s “No- Things”: Photographic Plasticity in Japan (1939–1940)’, in Object Fantasies, Experience and Creation, ed. Philippe Cordez, Romana Kaske, Julia Sviello and Susanne Thürigen (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2018).

84 Sakata ‘Sakuga gihō tanaoroshi chō’ (1), 71. See also Sakata ‘Sakuga gihō tanaoroshi chō’ (2), 55. 85 Sakata implies his knowledge of anamorphism by describing Surrealism as sometimes adopting ‘amoeba-like form’ (amībateki keitai) in ‘The Technological Explanation’, as per Sakata, ‘Zen’ei shashin sakuhin’, 295. 86 Shimozato Yoshio, ‘Foto amachua kō’ [Thoughts of a Photo Amateur], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 14: Ei-Kyū, Shimozato Yoshio, renzu no avangyarudo [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 14: Ei-Kyū, Shimozato Yoshio,

Avant-Garde of the Lens], ed. Yamada Satoshi (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001). 87 Ibid., 284. 88 I am grateful to Takeba Jō, curator at the Nagoya City Museum of Art, for showing me the series in May 2013.

Chapter 6 1 2

Dan Mitsuji, ‘Sensō to shūrurearizumu sono ta’ [War and Surrealism, and Else], Kamera āto, June Edition (1939): 10. Nakajima Tokuhiro, ‘Toshi no shashinka, Nakayama Iwata – sono shirarezaru ichimen’ [Iwata Nakayama, A Photographer of the Modern City – Its Unknown Aspect], in Shirarezaru Nakayama Iwata [Iwata Nakayama, His Unknown Aspects], ed. Nakajima Tokuhiro and Takasago Miwako, exh. cat. (Tokyo: Seibu Hyakkaten, 1989), unpaginated. I use the title of the exhibition provided in English translation of the text in this volume and rely on translation of Itagaki Takaho’s comment provided there.

3

Ibid. A part of the series can be viewed in Hyōgo Kenritsu Bijutsukan (ed.), Retoro modan Kōbe: Nakayama Iwata tachi ga nokoshita senzen no Kōbe [Nakayama Iwata’s Retrospective: A Photographer and Prewar Kobe], exh. cat. (Kobe: Hyōgo

5

Kenritsu Bijutsukan, 2010), 26–50. Nakayama Iwata, ‘Fuyu no sakuhinshū’ [A Winter Collection of Artworks], Kamera kurabu 3, no. 1 (1938): unpaginated. Kawahata Naomichi, ‘Shashin hekiga no jidai: Pari Banpaku to Nyūyōku Banpaku Kokusaikan Nihonbu chūshin ni’ [The Photomural Age: Japanese Exhibits at the Paris International Exposition and the New York World’s Fair], in ‘Teikoku’ to bijutsu: 1930 nendai Nihon no taigai bijutsu senryaku [‘Empire’ and Art: Japanese Art of the 1930s and Its Strategic Expansion Abroad], ed. Omuka Toshiharu (Tokyo: Kokusho

6

Ibid., 408. For the photobook that accompanied the display and was distributed

4

Kankōkai, 2010), 388. at the site and among the sponsors of the pavilion, see Nippon [Japan] (Tokyo:

Kokusai Bunka Shinkōkai, 1937). 7 8

Kawahata, ‘Shashin hekiga no jidai’, 446.

John Robert Gold and Margaret M. Gold, Cities of Culture: Staging International Festivals and the Urban Agenda, 1851–2000 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005), 97.

After the exhibition closed, the Japanese pavilion was destroyed in protest of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

9 Domon Ken, ‘Puropaganda’ [Propaganda], Foto taimusu 16, no. 3 (1939): 11. 10 ‘Kongo no shashin wa kōde aritai: Hōdō shashin, Geijutsu shashin, Zen’ei shashin nado o chūshin ni purofesshonaru to amachua no zadankai’ [The Way for Photography from Now On: A Round Table Meeting between Professionals and Amateurs, Focusing on Photojournalist, Art, Avant-Garde and Other Photography], Foto taimusu 16, no. 3 (1939): 61–69.

11 ‘Tairiku to shashin no zadankai’ [A Round Table Discussion of the Continent and Photography], Foto taimusu 16, no. 6 (1939): 85–92.

12 Tucker, The History of Japanese Photography, 348. 13 Abe Yoshifumi, ‘Dairen yori’ [From Dalian], Foto taimusu 16, no. 9 (1939): 25. 14 ‘Tairiku kaisai Nihon shinshin shashin sakka sakuhin ten no puroguramu’ [The Continent Exhibition: Programme for an Exhibition of Artworks by Japanese Emerging Photographers], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 3: Shūrurearisumu no shashin to hihyō [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 3: Surrealist Photography

and Criticism], ed. Takeba Jō (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001), 448. The proposed programme appears at the very end of the February 1940 volume of Photo Times, a special issue dedicated to photography on the ‘continent’. 15 Abe Yoshifumi, ‘Gūgo’ [Conversation], Kameraman, July Edition (1938): 21. 16 Hamada, ‘Senzen no Abe Yoshifumi’, 16 n. 28. 17 Takeba Jō (ed.), Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 3: Shūrurearisumu no shashin to hihyō [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 3: Surrealist Photography and Criticism] (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001), 617. 18 Abe Yoshifumi, ‘Abe Yoshifumi no pēji’ [Abe Yoshifumi’s Page], Foto taimusu 17, no. 2 (1940): 33. This entire volume is dedicated to photography on the continent and showcases a number of local photographers. The same issue also includes Watanabe’s feature, adopting a full-page format and featuring similar close-up renditions of everyday objects. 19 Namigata, Ekkyō no avangyarudo, 60. 20 Huang Ya-Li’s film Le Moulin (2015) shows a similar exchange between the avantgarde circles in colonial Taiwan and Japan in the 1930s. 21 Annika Culver, Glorify the Empire: Japanese Avant-Garde Propaganda in Manchukuo (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2013), 6–7. 22 ‘Tairiku genchi hōkoku zadankai’ [Report from the Continent Symposium], Foto taimusu 17, no. 3 (1940): 71–72. 23 Ibid., 71. 24 Culver, Glorify the Empire, 2–3. 25 Namigata, Ekkyō no avangyarudo, 67. 26 Ibid., 67–68. 27 ‘Tairiku genchi hōkoku zadankai’, 81. 28 Namigata, Ekkyō no avangyarudo, 69. 29 Ibid., 70. 30 Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, translated by J. A. Underwood (London: Penguin, 2008), 38.

31 Alana Jelinek, This Is Not Art: Activism and Other ‘Non-Art’ (London: I.B. Tauris, 2013). 32 Volk, ‘Authority, Autonomy’, 466–467. 33 Culver, Glorify the Empire, 5. None of the photographers discussed in Culver’s study – such as Fuchikami Hakuyō and Kimura Ihei – were ‘avant-garde’ in the Surrealist sense of the word but were working within the modernist shinkō shashin. For the most recent overview of modernist photography in Manchukuo, see Takeba Jō (ed.), Ikyō no modanizumu: Manshū shashin zenshi [The Development of Japanese Modern Photography in Manchoukuo], exh. cat. (Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai, 2017). 34 Kenneth Ruoff, ‘Japanese Tourism to Mukden, Nanjing, and Qufu, 1938–1943’, Japan Review 27 (2014): 171–200. 35 Omuka, Hijōji no modanizumu, 146–161.

36 Sakata Minoru, ‘Anchishurubariarizumu to Anchiavangarito (Hizen’ei geijutsuka, Giji chōgenjitsushugi haisekiron)’ [Anti-Surrvariarism and Anti-Avantgardian: A NonAvant-Garde Artist’s Boycott of Pseudo-Surrealism], Kamera āto 3 (1939): 20–22. 37 Ibid., 21.

38 The mistake took place in a mixture of Japanese katakana and ideogram letters as shūrubariyarizumu, whereas ‘variarism’ is spelled in Japanese as bariarizumu, as per

Ibid. 39 Ibid. 40 Yabumae Tomoko, ‘Chūshō kaiga no chinmoku: Hasegawa Saburō ni okeru “koten” to “zen’ei”’ [The Silence of Abstract Painting: ‘Classics’ and ‘Avant-Garde’ in Hasegawa Saburō’s Work], in Kurashikku modan: 1930 nendai Nihon no geijutsu

[Classically Modern: Japanese Art in the 1930s], ed. Omuka Toshiharu and Kawata Akihisa (Tokyo: Serika Shobō, 2004), 119. 41 Hasegawa Saburō, Kyōdoshi [Chronicle of One’s Native Place], in Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 3: Shūrurearisumu no shashin to hihyō [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 3: Surrealist Photography and Criticism], ed. Takeba Jō (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001). 42 Taniguchi Eri, ‘Kikaiteki shikaku media no “eikyō” kara miru Shōwa 10 nendai no zen’ei kaiga – Takiguchi Shūzō “Eikyō ni tsuite” (Shōwa 14 nen) o tegakari ni’ [Avant-Garde Painting of the 1930s Seen from the Perspective of Mechanical Media ‘Influence’, in Reference to Takiguchi Shūzō’s ‘On Influence’ (1939)], in Shōwaki bijutsu tenrankai no kenkyū: Senzenhen [Research into Art Exhibitions in Shōwa

Era, Prewar Period], ed. Tōkyō Bunkazai Kenkyūjo Kikaku Jōhōbu [Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties] (Tokyo: Kokuritsu Bunkazai Kikō Tōkyō Bunkazai Kenkyūjo, 2009), 399. 43 Hasegawa, Kyōdoshi, 379. Shōji equally refers to sliding doors, windows and room partitions, and different materials are used for rectangular wooden panels. 44 For a rare account of this collaboration, see Taniguchi Eri, ‘Kindai Nihonno ‘zen’ei geijutsu’ to media, tekunorojī’ [‘Avant-Garde Art’, Media, and Technology in Modern Japan] (PhD diss., Tokyo University of the Arts, 2011).

45 Nagoya-shi Bijutsukan, Nihon no shūrurearisumu: 1925–1945, 200. 46 Takahashi Wataru compares the image with Mondrian’s abstraction in the issue, as per Foto taimusu 16, no. 10 (1939): unpaginated.

47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. 49 Takeba Jō, ‘Aru chāto e no chūshaku: Nagoya no shashinshi o meguru danshō’ [Annotations on a Certain Chart: Pieces of Photography History in Nagoya], Rear 14 (2006): 10. 50 Alan Tansman (ed.), The Culture of Japanese Fascism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009). 51 Shimozato Yoshio, ‘Gaizai suru hishatai ni yorite hi-shōkeiteki zōei (1)’ [NonFigurative Imaging of External Objects (1)], Foto taimusu 16, no.12 (1939): 46–50. Shimozato Yoshio, ‘Gaizai suru hishatai ni yorite hi-shōkeiteki zōei (2)’ [NonFigurative Imaging of External Objects (2)], Foto taimusu 17, no. 1 (1940): 47–50. 52 Yamanaka Chirū, ‘Shashin zōkei zuisō’ [Occasional Thoughts on Plastic Photography], Foto taimusu 17, no. 7 (1940): 60–62. 53 Ibid., 61. 54 Ibid., 62. 55 According to photography historian Kaneko Ryūichi, Hirai Terushichi collaborated with the police, as discussed in a conversation with the author at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum on 22 February 2013. 56 ‘Hittorā to kodomo: Hittorā wa shashin no tsuyosa to kowasa o shitteiru’ [Hitler and Children: Hitler Knows the Power and Fear of Photography], Kamera kurabu 10 (1940): 12–14. A text written by a photographer and a member of the Documentary Photography Club follows the feature, describing Hitler’s understanding and use of

the power of photographic representation, with the work of Heinrich Hoffmann and Leni Riefenstahl as examples: Shibata Ryūji, ‘Nachisu no kamera seisaku’ [Nazi Camera Policies], Kamera kurabu, October Edition (1940): 15. 57 Takiguchi Shūzō, ‘Shashin to zōkeisei no saikentō’ [Re-Examining Photography and Plasticity], Foto taimusu 17, no. 11 (1940): 23–25. 58 Ibid., 24. 59 Ibid., 25. 60 Ibid. 61 Sakata, Zōkei shashin 1934–1941, unpaginated. 62 Almost every source that offers a study of Sakata’s work in the decade includes this later Yamamoto’s recollection. See, for example, Nishimura, Nihon geijutsu shashinshi, 288–290. 63 Iida, Rethinking Identity in Modern Japan, 36. 64 Sandra Wilson, ‘Rethinking Nation and Nationalism in Japan’, in Nation and Nationalism in Japan, ed. Sandra Wilson (London: Routledge, 2002), 18. 65 Sakata Minoru, ‘Atarashiki waraji’ [A New Pair of Straw Sandals], Kamera āto 7 (1940): 63–67, 72. 66 Ibid., 63. 67 Ibid., 65. 68 Ibid., 67. 69 Takeba, Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 3, 631. 70 Takeba, ‘Nagoya no shashinshi’, 14.

71 'Overcoming Modernity' (Kindai no chokoku), a symposium organized by the Kyoto University in 1942, represents the peak of this ideology, according to which the war was both ethically and aesthetically justified. For a detailed account of this symposium, see Harry D. Harootunian, Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture, and Community in Interwar Japan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 34-94. 72 'Atarashiki waraji', 67. Sakata, 73 66. ibid., 74 72. Ibid., Hiromi 75 Mizuno, Science for the Empire (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 3. 76 82. ibid., 77 'Shashin Takiguchi,

to

zokeisei', 24.

interrogated by the police with regard to publishing the Surrealist magazine Yarn no funsui (1938-1939) in 1939, with the police asking him such questions as 'How does your surreal photography aid Japan's war efforts?', as per Solt, 'Perception, Misperception, Nonperception', 53.

Yamamoto 78

was

79 Sakata Minoru, Shashin no zdkei bunka e no hoshi, Zdkei shashin no seikaku [Photography in the Service of Plastic Culture, Characteristics of Plastic

Photography] (Tokyo: Arusu, 1941). 80 7. ibid., 81 8. Ibid., 82 13. ibid., 83 31. Ibid., 84 34. Ibid., 85 45. Mizuno, Science for the Empire, 83. ibid., 86 Harootunian, 'Constitutive Ambiguities: The Persistence of Modernism and Harry Fascism in Japan's Modern History', in The Culture of Japanese Fascism, ed. Alan Tansman (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), 81.

densetsu' [Buddhist Legend], in Korekushon Nihon no shashin to hihyd [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 3: Surrealist Photography and Criticism], ed. Takeba Jo (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001).

87 Yamamoto Kansuke, 'Garan

no

shururearisumu 3: Shururearisumu

'Disobedient Spirit', 200-201. See also Munro, Communicating Vessels, Maddox, 88 153-154. Yamamoto 89 Kansuke, 'Shashin ni kansuru kanketsu na zogon' [A Concise Vilification with Regard to Photography], in Korekushon Nihon shururearisumu 3: no shashin to hihyd [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 3: Surrealist Photography and Criticism], ed. Takeba Jo (Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001). Although Yamamoto published poetry in the magazine since its establishment in 1935, he only started submitting photographs in 1939, when he became a member of the VOU Club (VOU Kurabu), an association behind the publication led by a Surrealist poet, Kitasono Katsue, as in Sawa, Korekushon, Toshi modanizumu shishi 15, 632-633.

Shururearisumu

90 'Shashin ni kansuru', 521 Yamamoto,

91 Ibid., 521. 92 Ibid., 523. 93 Takiguchi Shūzō, ‘Dari no kinkyō’ [Dalí’s Recent Activities], in Takiguchi Shūzō, Ōoka Makoto et al., Korekushon Takiguchi Shūzō 13, Senzen, senchūhen III: 1939–1944 [Collection Takiguchi Shūzō 13, Prewar and War Period 3, 1939–1944] (Tokyo: Misuzu Shobō, 1995). 94 Ibid., 134. 95 Takiguchi Shūzō, ‘Futatsu no pōtorēto’ [Two Portraits], in Takiguchi Shūzō, Ōoka Makoto et al., Korekushon Takiguchi Shūzō 13, Senzen, senchūhen III: 1939–1944 [Collection Takiguchi Shūzō 13, Prewar and War Period 3, 1939–1944] (Tokyo: Misuzu Shobō, 1995). 96 Takiguchi Shūzō, ‘Amerika ni watatta Dari’ [Dalí Goes to America], in Takiguchi Shūzō, Ōoka Makoto et al., Korekushon Takiguchi Shūzō 13, Senzen, senchūhen III: 1939–1944 [Collection Takiguchi Shūzō 13, Prewar and War Period 3, 1939–

1944] (Tokyo: Misuzu Shobō, 1995). 97 Ibid., 138. 98 Ibid., 139. For a detailed discussion of Enigma of Hitler, see Robin Greeley, ‘Dali’s Fascism, Lacan’s Paranoia’, Art History 24, no. 4 (2001): 477.

99 Sawa, Korekushon, Toshi modanizumu shishi 15, 766. 100 For a detailed discussion about the incident in 1934 in which Dalí was accused for ‘glorification of Hitlerian fascism’, see Ades, Dalí, 106–107. 101 Mark Polizzotti, Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton (Boston: Black Widow Press, 2009), 435. 102 Michael Lucken, ‘Total Unity in the Mirror of Art’, translated by Francesca Simkin, in Art and War in Japan and Its Empire, ed. Asato Ikeda, Aya L. McDonald and Ming Tiampo (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 80.

103 Isamu Noguchi and Ansel Adams are some of the prominent figures in the United States who opposed to this decision and showed their support by volunteering at

and documenting the camps. 104 105 106 107

Matsumi, Kōkoku shashin no modanizumu, 54.

Lucken, ‘Total Unity’, 80–81. Ibid., 83–84. Mizuno, Science for the Empire, 11.

Conclusion 1 2

Miwako Tezuka, ‘Jikken Kōbō and Takiguchi Shūzō: The New Deal Collectivism of 1950s Japan’, positions: east asia cultures critique 21, no. 2 (2013): 355–357. Mitsuda Yuri, ‘Nihon “gendai bijutsu” no seiritsu to tenkai’ [The Establishment and Development of ‘Contemporary Art’ in Japan], in Bijutsu no Nihon kingendaishi: Seido, gensetsu, zōkei [Histories of Modern and Contemporary Japan through

Art: Institutions, Discourses, Practice], ed. Kitazawa Noriaki, Satō Dōshin and Mori Hitoshi (Tokyo: Tōkyō Bijutsu, 2014), 531.

3 4 5

Eikoh Hosoe and Mark Holborn, Eikoh Hosoe: Masters of Photography (New York: Aperture, 1999), 1. Yuri Mitsuda, ‘The Realism Debate’, in Doryun Chong et al., From Postwar to Postmodern: Art in Japan 1945–1989, Primary Documents (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2012), 49. Kotarō Iizawa, ‘The Evolution of Postwar Photography’, in Anne Wilkes Tucker et al., The History of Japanese Photography (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 213.

6

Satomi Fujimura, ‘The “First” Avant-Garde’, in The Japanese Photobook, 1912– 1990, ed. Manfred Heiting and Kaneko Ryuichi (Göttingen: Steidl, 2017), 101.

7

Tsuchiya Seiichi, ‘Midasareta “kiroku” no arika: “Shashin hyaku nen” saikō’ [The Whereabouts of the ‘Record’ Discovered: Reflections on A Century of Photography], translator unknown, in Nihon shashin no 1968: 1966–1974 Futtō suru shashin no mure [1968, Japanese Photography: Photographs that Stirred Up Debate,

8

1966–1974], ed. Tōkyō-to Shashin Bijutsukan, exh. cat. (Tokyo: Tōkyō-to Shashin Bijutsukan, 2013), XVIII. Yuri Mitsuda, ‘Intersections of Art and Photography in 1970s Japan: “Thinking from Dates and Places”’, translated by Reiko Tomii, in For a New World to Come: Experiments in Japanese Art and Photography, 1968–1979, ed. Nakamori Yasafumi, exh. cat. (Houston: Museum of Fine Art Houston, 2015), 28.

9 10 11 12

Mitsuda, ‘Nihon “gendai bijutsu”’, 529–530. Ibid., 535–536. Tezuka, ‘Jikken Kōbō and Takiguchi Shūzō’, 359. Ōtsuji Kiyoji, Shashin nōto [Note of Photography] (Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppansha, 1989), 142–147. 13 Ōtsuji Kiyoji et al., Ōtsuji Kiyoji no shashin: Deai to koraborēshon [Ōtsuji Kiyoji’s Photography: Encounters and Collaborations] (Tokyo: Firumu Āto sha, 2007), 10. 14 Abe’s collaboration with Ōtsuji followed the resuming of his activities in the photographic ‘world’ in 1949, as per Iizawa Kōtarō, ‘Shashinkai e no ekkyōsha, Abe Nobuya to shashin’ [Beyond the Borders of the Photography World: Abe Nobuya and Photography], in Abe Nobuya: Akunaki ekkyōsha [Nobuya Abe 1913–1971: Insatiable Quest beyond Borders], ed. Shioda Jun’ichi et al., exh. cat. (Tokyo:

Inshōsha, 2018), 15. 15 Yamaguchi Katsuhiro, ‘”Jikken Kōbō” to bijutsu no datsu-ryōiki’ [Experimental Workshop and the Deterritorialization of Art], translator unknown, in Omāju Takiguchi Shūzō ten 11: Jikken Kōbō to Takiguchi Shūzō = Experimental Workshop [Homage Exhibition to Takiguchi Shūzō 11: Jikken Kōbō and Takiguchi Shūzō = Experimental Workshop], ed. Satani Garō, exh. cat. (Tokyo: Satani Garō, 1991), 26. 16 Mizusawa Tsutomu, ‘Jikken Kōbō: Mebae to kizashi’ [Experimental Workshop: A Seeding and a Sign], translated by Polly Barton, in Jikken Kōbō ten: Sengo geijutsu o kirihiraku [Experimental Workshop: Opening Up Postwar Art], ed. Kanagawa kenritsu kindai bijutsukan, exh. cat. (Tokyo: Yomiuri Shinbunsha, 2013), 314. For the collaboration between Hamada and Ōtsuji, see Kurosawa Yoshiteru, Nihon no shururearisumu to iu shikōya [Japanese Surrealism, a Field of Thought] (Tokyo:

Meibun Shobō, 2016), 421–425. 17 Ibid.

18 Ibid., 312. 19 Mitsuda, ‘Nihon “gendai bijutsu”’, 550. 20 Ibid., 551. Hasegawa delivered a lecture at the Columbia University in 1954, in a series of talks on Zen Buddhism. 21 Miwako Tezuka, ‘Experimentation and Tradition: The Avant-Garde Play Peirrot Lunaire by Jikken Kōbō and Takechi Tetsuji’, Art Journal 70, no. 3 (2011): 68. 22 Mitsuda, ‘Nihon “gendai bijutsu”’, 551. 23 Pedro Erber, ‘Introduction to Akasegawa Genpei’s “The Object after Stalin”’, ARTMargins 4, no. 3 (2015): 110. 24 Reiko Tomii, Radicalism in the Wilderness, International Contemporaneity and 1960s Art in Japan (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016), 35. 25 Ibid., 37. 26 Iwaya Kunio, ‘Takiguchi Shūzō to Andore Buruton’ [Shuzo Takiguchi and André Breton], translator unknown, in Omāju Takiguchi Shūzō ten 13: Andore Buruton to Takiguchi Shūzō [André Breton and Shuzo Takiguchi: The 13th Exhibition Homage to

Shuzo Takiguchi], ed. Satani Garō, exh. cat. (Tokyo: Satani Garō, 1993), 45. 27 Thomas R. H. Havens, Radicals and Realists in the Japanese Nonverbal Arts (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006), 51. 28 Ross, Photography for Everyone, 41–68. 29 ‘Joryū sakka ni teigen suru’ [Recommendations to Women Artists], Photo Times 17, no. 4 (1940): 6–11. Takiguchi Shūzō, ‘Dōra Māru’ [Dora Maar], Photo Times 17, no. 4 (1940): 22–23. Lee Miller is also accredited in the historical account of women photographers included at the end of the volume. 30 Kokatsu Reiko and Yoshimoto Midori (eds.), Zen’ei no josei, 1950–1975 [Japanese Women Artists in Avant-Garde Movements, 1950–1975] (Utsunomiya-shi: Tochigi Kenritsu Bijutsukan, 2005). See also Alicia Volk, ‘Katsura Yuki and the Japanese Avant-Garde’, Woman’s Art Journal 24, no. 2 (2004): 3–9. 31 Ikeda Tatsuo, ‘Watashi ni totte shururearisumu to wa nani ka: Sono shiteki na shishiteki na hōkoku’ [The Way I See Surrealism, a Private and Personal Historical Report], Bijutsu techō 336 (1970): 154–161.

32 Isozaki Arata, ‘Han-kaisō: “Ore wa hyōronka janakute hihyōka nan da” to itta Tōno Yoshiaki no koto o omoidashite mita’ [Anti-Recollection: Trying to Recall Tōno Yoshiaki, Who Said: ‘I am Not a Commentator, I am a Critic’], in Kyozō no jidai: Tōno Yoshiaki bijutsu hihyōsen [Art Critics by Yoshiaki Tono], ed. Tōno

Yoshiaki, Matsui Shigeru and Imura Yasuko (Tokyo: Kawade Shobō Shinsha, 2013). 33 William A. Marotti, Money, Trains and Guillotines: Art and Revolution in 1960s Japan (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013), 127. Marotti gives an example of Kaidō Hideo, a collaborator of Takiguchi’s in Surrealist research groups during the 1930s, who was among the chief initiators of the Yomiuri Indépendant. A major annual exhibition running from 1949 and possibly the most significant platform for

the rise of independent and alternative art in Japan, it also showed the work of such Surrealist artists as Ernst in 1951, as per Ei-Kyū, Ei-Kyū Sakuhinshū [Ei-Kyū, Compilation of Artworks] (Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Shinbunsha, 1997), 13. 34 Marotti, Money, Trains and Guillotines, 179.

35 Ibid., 180. 36 Ibid., 161. 37 Takiguchi Shūzō, Kindai geijutsu [Modern Art] (Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppansha, 1962), 12. 38 Ibid., 14. 39 Ibid., 8. 40 Durozoi, History of the Surrealist Movement, 532–533. Maurice Blanchot, ‘Reflections on Surrealism’, in The Work of Fire, translated by Charlotte Mandell

(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), 85. 41 Durozoi, History of the Surrealist Movement, 461–481. Agnieszka Kuczuńska, ‘Surréalism en 1947 – Occultism and the Post-War Marginalisation of Surrealism’, Art Inquiry. Recherches sur les arts 16 (2014): 87–99. 42 Scott J. Miller, Historical Dictionary of Modern Japanese Literature and Theatre (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2009), 111. 43 KuroDalaiJee, ‘Performance Collectives in 1960s Japan: With a Focus on the “Ritual School”, positions: east asia cultures critique 21, no. 2 (2013): 430. 44 Ibid., 429–430. 45 Ibid., 431. 46 Nonaka’s collages accompany several books of Shibusawa’s writing, including Kyō-ō, Rūtovihi ni- sei (‘Mad King’ Ludwig II, 1966).

47 Iwaya Kunio, ‘Shururearisumu no kyō: Sono “kakuri” to “inpei” ni tsuite’ [Today of Surrealism, and Its ‘Isolation’ and ‘Concealment’], Bijutsu techō 336 (1970): 49.

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Yamanaka Chirū. ‘Chōgenjitsushugi no taishō’ [The Subject of Surrealism]. In Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 6: Yamanaka Chirū, 1930 nendai no oruganaizā

[Collection of Surrealism in Japan 6: Yamanaka Chirū, Organiser of the 1930s], edited by Kurosawa Yoshiteru, 416–418. Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 1999. Yamanaka Chirū. ‘Chōgenjitsushugi to wa nanika’ [What Is Surrealism]. In Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 6: Yamanaka Chirū, 1930 Screen and Layered Depth nendai no oruganaizā [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 6: Yamanaka Chirū, Organiser of the

1930s], edited by Kurosawa Yoshiteru, 402–403. Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 1999. Yamanaka Chirū. ‘Furansu kaiga no zen’ei, Sarubadoru Dari no ichi’ [French AvantGarde Painting, The Position of Salvador Dalí]. In Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 6: Yamanaka Chirū, 1930 nendai no oruganaizā [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 6: Yamanaka Chirū, Organiser of the 1930s], edited by Kurosawa Yoshiteru, 348. Tokyo:

Hon no Tomosha, 1999. Yamanaka Chirū. ‘Kaigai Chōgenjitsushugi Sakuhin ten hōkokusho’ [Report about the Exhibition of Foreign Surrealist Works]. In Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 6: Yamanaka Chirū, 1930 nendai no oruganaizā [Collection Surrealism in Japan 6: Yamanaka Chirū, Organiser of the 1930s], edited by Kurosawa Yoshiteru, 404–405. Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 1999.

Yamanaka Chirū. ‘OBJET SURRÉALISTE no mondai’ [The Problem of the Surrealist Object]. In Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 6: Yamanaka Chirū, 1930 nendai no oruganaizā [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 6: Yamanaka Chirū, Organiser of the 1930s], edited by Kurosawa Yoshiteru, 349–351. Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 1999.

Yamanaka Chirū. ‘POCO A POCO, Saikin no gashū no shōkai’ [POCO A POCO, Introducing the Recent Illustrated Albums]. In Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 6: Yamanaka Chirū, 1930 nendai no oruganaizā [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 6: Yamanaka Chirū, Organiser of the 1930s], edited by Kurosawa Yoshiteru, 399–401

Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 1999. Yamanaka Chirū. ‘Sakata Minoru no sakuhin’ [Sakata Minoru’s Artworks]. Shashin saron, January Edition (1939): 48–51. Yamanaka Chirū. ‘Shashin zōkei zuisō’ [Occasional Thoughts on Plastic Photography]. Foto taimusu 17, no. 7 (1940): 60–62. Yamanaka Chirū. ‘Shururearisumu shisō no kokusaika: Kōki ni kaete’ [Internationalisation of Surrealist Thought: A Postscript]. In Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 15:

Shūrurearisumu kihon shiryō shūsei [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 15: Surrealism, Collection of Fundamental Documents], edited by Wada Hirofumi, 265–276. Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001. Yamanaka Chirū (ed.). L’Échange surréaliste. In Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 15: Shūrurearisumu kihon shiryō shūsei [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 15: Surrealism,

Collection of Fundamental Documents], edited by Wada Hirofumi, 175–277. Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001. Yamanaka Chirū (trans.). ‘Kusatta roba (Saruvadooru Dari)’ [Rotting Donkey (Salvador Dalí)]. Mizue 394 (1937): 13–17. Yamamoto Kansuke. ‘Garan no densetsu’ [Buddhist Legend]. In Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 3: Shūrurearisumu no shashin to hihyō [Collection of Surrealism

in Japan 3: Surrealist Photography and Criticism], edited by Takeba Jō, 498–500. Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001. Yamamoto Kansuke. ‘Shashin ni kansuru kanketsu na zōgon’ [A Concise Vilification with Regard to Photography]. In Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 3: Shūrurearisumu no shashin to hihyō [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 3: Surrealist Photography and

Criticism], edited by Takeba Jō, 521–524. Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001. Yamawaki Iwao. ‘Naniga okashii’ [Is There Something Funny?]. In Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 3: Shūrurearisumu no shashin to hihyō [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 3: Surrealist Photography and Criticism], edited by Takeba Jō, 52. Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001. Yamawaki Iwao. ‘Nihon no fotomontāju o miru’ [Looking at Japanese Photomontage]. In Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 3: Shūrurearisumu no shashin to hihyō [Collection

of Surrealism in Japan 3: Surrealist Photography and Criticism], edited by Takeba Jō, 53–60. Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001. Yasui Nakaji. ‘Shashin no hattatsu to sono geijutsuteki shosō’ [Development of Photography and Its Artistic Aspects]. In Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu 3: Shūrurearisumu no shashin to hihyō [Collection of Surrealism in Japan 3: Surrealist Photography and

Criticism], edited by Takeba Jō, 529–539. Tokyo: Hon no Tomosha, 2001. Yoshihara Jirō, et al. Yoshihara Jirō ten: Seitan 100 nen kinen [Jirō Yoshihara: A Centenary Retrospective ]. Exhibition catalogue. Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 2005. ‘Zen’ei shashin saikentō zadankai’ [Round Table Meeting Rethinking Avant-Garde Photography]. Kameraman, February Edition (1939): 17–29. ‘Zen’ei shashin zadankai’ [Avant-Garde Photography Symposium]. Foto taimusu 15,

no. 9 (1938): 6–17.

INDEX

Abe Yoshifumi 56 , 60 , 61 , 98 – 9 , 104,

106–7, 113, 125–8, 126, 127, 132, 142, 143, 144, 145–7, 155, 164, 170,

178, 202 n.86, 210 n.40, 220 n.18, 225 n.14 Adamowicz, Elza 82 – 3

Ades, Dawn 6, 110, 126, 132 amateur photography/photographers 8 ,

15, 24, 134, 137, 168 photo clubs 66 – 7 , 74 , 119, 125

professionals and 29–36, 142 anamorphism 132, 134, 136, 219 n.85

Aragon, Louis 3, 39, 92, 198 n.12 ‘Aragon affair’ in 1929 3, 92 Army Art Association (Rikugun Bijutsu

Kyōkai) 117, 184

avant garde 5 , 7 , 9 , 17 , 19 – 21 , 30 , 35 ,

37, 145, 168–9, 173 ‘avant-garde propaganda’ 147– 8

European movements of 13 Japanese 4–5, 17 ‘newness’ 17, 37–8, 90 Russian movement of 13–15, 39 ‘avant-garde’ photography (zen’ei

shashin) 8–9, 19–20, 65–91, 96–9, 118, 221 n.33 Avant-Garde Photography Association

(Zen’ei Shashin Kyōkai) 66, 73, 117, 185 Avant-Garde Photography Symposium

(Zen’ei shashin zadankai) 70, 80, 82, 98, 100, 142

Arp, Hans 1 , 17 , 37 , 112, 118, 130, 153,

213 n.89 Art and Culture Association (Bijutsu

Bunka Kyōkai) 59, 145, 158, 170, 184

Bachelard, Gaston 93

Baker, Simon 94, 127

Barr, Alfred 43, 65, 200 n.53 Barthes, Roland 23

Artaud, Antonin 3 , 87

Bataille, Georges 3, 94, 111–13, 124–5,

arts plastiques 38 art world 51, 137, 173, 194 n.36

Bate, David 29 – 30

Asahi Camera magazine 15 – 16 , 18 , 20 ,

23, 34, 71, 77, 140, 207 n.95 Ashiya Camera Club (Ashiya Kamera

Kurabu) 16, 21–3, 30, 184 Atget, Eugène 67, 125

174, 218 n.76 Benjamin, Walter 78, 99, 146 Bergson, Henri 153 Bizan, Ueda 80, 81, 87–8, 154, 182 Blanchot, Maurice 174, 176 Blossfeldt, Karl 112, 157

Atorie magazine 1, 14, 25–6, 28, 65–8, 82

Bober, Harry 42

automatism 2 , 17 , 26 , 28 , 43 , 45 , 72 , 84 ,

Brassaï 65, 72, 127

95–6 ‘camera’s automatism’ 100– 7 , 121– 2 ,

135, 138, 152 Avant-Garde Artists’ Club (Avangyarudo

Geijutsuka Kurabu) 56, 66, 169, 184 Avant-Garde Image Group (Avangyarudo

Zōei Shūdan) 66, 68, 71–3, 184

Breton, André 1 – 7 , 14 , 16 – 17 , 19 , 40 ,

42–6, 56–7, 73, 77, 84, 92–5, 102, 111, 118, 121, 123, 163–4, 172, 174–6, 198 n.21 Dictionnaire abrégé du surréalisme

47–8 Bürger, Peter 4 , 145

INDEX Cahiers d’art magazine 1 , 26 , 92 , 94 – 5 ,

111, 208 n.13 Camera Art magazine 89, 132, 134, 136

Éluard, Paul 42 , 46 – 7 , 77 Dictionnaire abrégé du surréalisme

47–8

camera-less photographic technique 25

Ernst, Max 1 , 14 , 17 , 39 , 92 , 111, 123,

Carroll, Lewis 45, 57 Chéroux, Clément 35

EROS (Exposition inteRnatiOnale du

chōgenjitsushugi (Surrealism). See

Surrealism (chōgenjitsushugi) Communism 4 , 19 , 146

Communist Party 3, 13, 19, 167, 175

Constructivism 13, 35 Creative Arts Association (Bijutsu Sōsaku

Kyōkai) 117 Cubism 13, 19, 39, 112, 171

Cubism and Abstract Art exhibition 65

Culver, Annika 145–6, 221 n.33

212 n.79 Surréalisme) 175 ethnic nationalism 155, 164 The Experimental Workshop (Jikken

Kōbō) 169–71 Exposition de la confédération des

artistes d’avantgarde, Paris-Tokio 9, 17 Exposition internationale du surréalisme

47–8 Exposition surréaliste d’objects 92 , 94 , 96

Dada 13 – 14 , 17 , 19 , 21 , 23 , 39 , 68 , 147

Fer, Briony 112

Dalí, Salvador 3, 6, 37, 39, 46, 68, 84,

Fijalkowski, Krzysztof 3

92–6, 99, 101–2, 106, 111, 120, 122–5, 129–30, 132, 136, 148,

161, 163, 210 n.50, 211 n.60, 213 n.93, 217 nn.46–7 corrosive simulacra 124, 134 paranoiac-critical method 6 , 68 ,

84, 95–6, 99, 102, 111, 120–5, 129–30, 134, 136, 138, 217 n.46 simulacrum 124

Surrealist object 94–5, 102, 111, 127 ‘symbolically functioning’ objects 93 ,

95 de Chirico, Giorgio 1, 14, 17, 65

Film und Foto exhibition 8 , 14 – 16 , 19 , 21 ,

23, 110 Finkelstein, Haim 45

Flusser, Vilém 216 n.31 Foster, Hal 81 Foucault, Michel 42 Free Artists’ Association (Jiyū Bijutsuka

Kyōkai) 38, 50, 147, 152, 157, 194, 203 n.2 Freud, Sigmund 19 , 39 , 48 , 118

Freudian theory 100–2, 106, 121,

123–4

Deleuze, Gilles 53

‘Surrealist Freud Photos’ 106, 134 Fujimura Satomi 168

Democrat Artists Association

Fujita Tsuguharu 18, 20, 30, 59, 164, 178

(Demokurāto Bijutsuka Kyōkai) 173, 185

Fukuzawa Ichirō 1 , 26 , 59 , 65 , 70 , 144– 6 ,

164, 178–9, 195 n.67, 203 n.18

de Sade, Marquis 175

Desnos, Robert 1, 77

Gascoyne, David 45

dilettantism 35 , 147. See also amateur

Giacometti, Alberto 65, 93, 153

photography/photographers Domon Ken 141– 2 , 167 Ducasse, Isidore. See Lautréamont,

Comte de Duchamp, Marcel 92 – 3

Durozoi, Gérard 174

haiku, ‘Japanese poetry’ 49 , 201 n.58

Hanada Kiyoteru 171–2 Hanawa Gingo 54 – 6 , 54 , 68 – 71 , 72 , 73 ,

77, 80–1, 85–90, 179, 202 n.84, 204 n.35, 206 n.76, 209 n.32 Hanaya Kanbei 16 , 30

Eckersall, Peter 90 Ei-Kyū 6 – 7 , 25 – 7 , 28 , 29 , 34 , 49 – 53 , 51

65, 68, 120, 164, 173, 178, 191 n.46, 203 n.2

Harootunian, Harry 160 Harris, Steven 84 Hasegawa Saburō 28 , 147, 148, 150– 3 ,

169, 171, 179, 226 n.20

INDEX Hegel, G. W. F. 93 , 156 Hirai Terushichi 68 , 72 , 74 , 75 , 76 , 76 – 8 ,

79, 83, 83, 89, 179, 222 n.55 Hisano Hisashi 130, 152, 179

Hitler, Adolf 89–91, 161, 163, 222 n.56 Hugnet, Georges 43, 47, 198 n.22 Hutchinson, Rachael 91

Kitadai Shōzō 170–1

Kitao Jun’ichirō 65, 203 n.2 Koga Harue 1 – 2 , 14 , 24 , 26 , 180, 216

n.44 Koishi Kiyoshi 21 – 6 , 22 , 34 , 70 , 98 – 9 ,

120, 142, 180, 211 n.68 Kokuten exhibition 30 – 1 , 35 , 137

Konomi Giichirō 148–9, 152–3, 180 Iizawa Kōtarō 15 Ikemiya Seijirō 87 , 88 , 179 Imai Shigeru 6 , 37 – 40 , 40 , 43 , 46 – 7 , 67 ,

129, 129, 132, 142, 179 Ina Nobuo 15 , 21 , 23 – 4 , 28

Korekushon Nihon shūrurearisumu

(Collection of Surrealism in Japan) 8 Krauss, Rosalind 6, 29, 55

Kurosawa Yoshiteru 190 n.43, 198 n.20

Independent Art Association (Dokuritsu

Bijutusu Kyōkai) 37, 60, 147,

185 Independent Photography Research

Association (Dokuritsu Shashin Kenkyūkai) 160 International Surrealist Exhibition 47, 57,

70

Lacan, Jacques 49 , 123

La Peinture surréaliste exhibition 1 La Subversion des images: surréalisme,

photographie, film exhibition 6–7, 40 Lautréamont, Comte de 5 , 46 , 72 , 84 ,

174, 217 n.51

Iwaya Kunio 176

Levy, Julien 161

Jaguer, Édouard 6 – 7 , 39

Levy, Silvano 77 Livingston, Jane 6 Lucken, Michael 164

James, Edward 52 Japanese Avant-Garde Artists’ Club

(Nihon Avangyarudo Bijutsuka

Magritte, René 42

Kurabu) 169, 186

Malevich, Kazimir 14

Japan Romantic School (Nihon Rōmanha)

95–6, 185 Japan Subjective Photography League

(Nihon Shukanshugi Shashin Remmei) 168, 185 Japan Workshop (Nippon Kōbō) agency

24, 140, 186 Japon des Avant Gardes 1910–1970

exhibition 5

Manchukuo Concordia Association

(Manshūkoku Kyōwakai) 145 Man Ray 1 , 6 , 15 – 17 , 20 , 30 , 42 , 46 , 65 ,

73, 87, 93, 123, 200 n.53 Marotti, William 173– 4 , 226 n.33

Marxism 157–8 Marx, Karl 158 Masson, André 1, 3, 17, 53 Matsubara Jūzō 16 , 23 , 30 – 4 , 33 , 36 ,

137, 180, 196 n.84 Kaigai Chōgenjitsushugi Sakuhin ten

(Exhibition of Foreign Surrealist Works) 47, 66–8, 70–1, 73, 82, 95–7, 126 Kamera kurabu magazine 154

Matsuda Kazuko 89

Mavo avant-garde group 5 Minegishi Giichi 18–19 Minotaure magazine 42, 47, 52, 72, 94,

123–4, 127, 130, 158, 216 n.40

Kaneko Ryūichi 222 n.55

Miró, Joan 1 , 17 , 37 , 39 , 111, 118, 153

Kantorowicz, Ernst 52

Misaki Yōko 85, 87–8, 206 n.79 Mitsuda Yuri 17, 38, 72, 169

Katsura Yuki 179 Kawabata Yasunari 13 Kawasaki Kametarō 74, 77 Kimura Ihei 14, 24, 167, 221 n.33

Mizue magazine 25, 43, 47–8, 50, 68, 93,

111, 118, 123, 125, 137, 146–7, 161, 175

Mizuno Hiromi 157, 164

manifesto 16 – 21

Mizusawa Tsutomu 171

professionals and amateurs 29–36

modernist photography 7, 14, 19–20, 25,

30–1, 119 ‘modern life’ (modan raifu) 13 – 15 , 18 ,

25, 28 Moholy-Nagy, László 15 – 16 , 117,

119–20 Mondrian, Piet 37 , 55 – 6 , 121

reality and photography 21–4 New Photography Study Group (Shinkō

Shashin Kenkyūkai) 15 New Plasticity Art Association (Shin Zōkei

Bijutsu Kyōkai) 37–40, 43, 45–9, 60, 66, 111–12, 117, 120, 157,

186–7

Moriguchi Tari 1–2

New Sensibilities School (Shinkankakuha)

Muramatsu Masatoshi 2 Murayama Tomoyoshi 14–15

Nihon no shūrurearisumu 1925–1945

13, 26, 187 exhibition 7–8

Nadeau, Maurice 2 Nagata Isshū 56 – 61 , 59 , 89 , 98 , 118– 19 ,

142–3, 180, 202 n.90

Nishimura Tomohiro 191 n.51

Nishiwaki Junzaburō 2, 43, 181 Nougé, Paul 35, 77, 87

Nagoya Avant-Garde Club (Nagoya

Abangarudo Kurabu) 69, 73, 186 Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde (Nagoya Foto

Abangarudo) 66, 69, 100, 117, 161, 186 Nagoya Photography Culture Association

(Nagoya Shashin Bunka Kyōkai) 117, 150 Nagoya Photo Group (Nagoya Foto

Guruppe) 48, 69, 120, 186 Nakada Sadanosuke 15 , 35 , 180 Nakayama Iwata 7 , 15 – 18 , 20 – 1 , 23 ,

25–6, 30, 34, 120, 137, 140, 147, 153–4, 164, 180–1, 191 n.46, 219 n.2 Namigata Tsuyoshi 145– 6 Naniwa Photography Club (Naniwa

Shashin Kurabu) 16, 21, 23, 70–1, 159, 186 Nash, Paul 97 , 209 n.29 , 209 n.35

National Creative Painting Association

(Kokuga Sōsaku Kyōkai) 30 ‘nationalism’ 155, 157, 163– 4 National Mobilisation Law (Kokka sōdōin

hō) 117, 129 Nemuri no riyū (The Reason for Sleep

exhibition 26–9 Neo-Plasticism 37 , 157– 8

Oguma, Eiji 5

Okada Sōzō 14 Okamoto Tarō 47 , 65 , 111– 12 , 164, 169,

171, 181, 213 n.89 Okanoue Toshiko 172, 181

Omuka Toshiharu 37, 146 Orientalism 5 Ōtani Shōgo 53, 113, 132 Ōtsuji Kiyoji 168, 170–1, 181, 225 n.14

Ōtsuki Kenji 123 ‘Overcoming Modernity’ (Kindai no

chōkoku) symposium 223 n.71 paranoiac-critical method/paranoia-

criticism 6, 68, 84, 95–6, 99, 102,

111, 121–5, 129–30, 134, 136, 138, 217 n.46 Pari Tōkyō Shinkō Bijutsu ten (Exhibition

of New Art in Paris and Tokyo) exhibition 17, 20, 24–5, 37–8, 66, 144 Peace Preservation Law 3 – 4 , 53

Penrose, Roland 47, 70–1, 200 n.49 ‘photo-abstraction’ 120–1 ‘photo avant-garde’ 66–7, 69, 95, 105 photobook 90, 158, 173, 219 n.6

photo-collage 7, 9, 14, 25–6, 28, 30–4

‘Neo-Surrealism’ 107–15

artists collaboration of 46 – 9 , 54 , 61

Nerval, Gérard de 43, 56–7

deformation of image 50–3 mirror image 38–46, 56 superimposition 54–61

‘new’ photography (shinkō shashin) 8,

14–15, 66–7 individual artistic practices 25 – 8

types of 39

‘photo-drawings’ (photodessin), Ei-Kyū’s

28, 65 photogram technique 15–17, 21, 24–6,

28, 30, 65, 120 photographic magazines 15 , 20 , 69 , 71 ,

77, 89, 91, 105–6, 154.See also specific magazines

Rexer, Lyle 216 n.32

Richie, Donald 90

Riefenstahl, Leni 90 Rimbaud, Arthur 34 Romanticism 95–6, 106 Room Nine Society (Kyūshitsukai) 59–60,

170, 187

photographic technology 35 , 119, 134– 9

Rothman, Roger 124– 5

photojournalism 23–4, 35, 130, 154

Ruoff, Kanneth 146

photomontages 14 – 15 , 17 , 21 – 4 , 26 ,

30, 119 photomurals 140– 1

Saitō Yoshishige 146, 170

Sakata Minoru 69–70, 100, 101, 102,

photo-object 45, 126, 132, 199 n.37

104–6, 105, 110, 120–2, 130–1,

‘photo plasticity’/‘photo plasticism’ 38,

134–6, 137, 138, 139, 145, 148–60, 158, 181–2, 210 n.46,

117, 119, 121 Photo Plasticity Research Association

(Shashin Zōkei Kenkyūkai) 117

211 n.68, 218 n.82, 222 n.62 Salmon, André 17 – 18

‘photo-surrealism’ 120

School of Tokyo (Ekōru do Tōkyō) 48, 60

Photo Times magazine 17, 25, 56, 71,

Second Division Society (Nikakai)

77, 89, 134, 143, 151, 154, 168

exhibition 1, 24, 187

Picasso, Pablo 1 , 18 – 19

Seligmann, Kurt 28, 111

Pictorialism 23, 25, 35 ‘plasticism’ 134–5, 153, 157

Shakespeare, William 87, 89 Shattuck, Roger 2 Shibusawa Tatsuhiko 173, 175–7, 182

‘plasticity’ 37 , 113– 14 , 117– 19 , 122,

125, 129, 136, 148, 150, 152–4, 156, 210 n.49 ‘plastic’ photography (zōkei shashin) 8 – 9 ,

134, 141, 158 abstract photography 120– 3

anamorphism 125–34 artistic exchange 141–50 paranoia-criticism 123–5 photographic technology 134–9

political views 160–5 traditional aesthetics 151–5 Poggioli, Renato 4

Poivert, Michel 87 professional photography 25, 38, 173 and amateurs 8, 29–36, 142 proletarian art 3 – 5 , 14 , 19 – 20 , 37 , 56 ,

145 Public Peace Maintenance Law 79

‘pure’ art photography 14, 16–17, 20, 24

Shimozato Yoshio 37, 47, 69, 95–6,

99–104, 103, 105–7, 108, 109–13, 120–2, 127–30, 128, 134–5,

137–8, 148, 154, 152, 158–9,159, 182, 212 n.79, 213 n.93, 213 n.96 Société Irf (Soshiete Irufu) club 148,

150–3, 156, 158, 163, 187 Sōki Art Association (Sōki Bijutsu Kyōkai)

125, 187 solarization 119, 121, 144, 193 n.21

Solt, John 7 Sontag, Susan 6 Soupault, Philippe 3, 17, 43 Steinert, Otto 168

Stone-Richards, Michael 92, 106 straight shot 65 , 67 , 102– 3 , 122, 134,

141, 147–8, 151 Suprematism 14

surrationalism 93 Surrealism (chōgenjitsushugi) 40 , 66 , 80 ,

radical art/radicalism 4 , 15 , 20 – 1 , 68 , 70 ,

78, 89, 91, 100, 141, 174

93–4, 134, 211 n.69, 216 n.44 and abstraction 120– 3

Reverdy, Pierre 5–6, 84

contemporary art 172 definition of (1931) 4

revolution 92 – 4 , 106, 112– 13 , 208 n.8 ,

literary Surrealism 2–3, 5, 7

rayography 119, 121

208 n.17

‘Neo-Surrealism’ 107–15

origin of word 43

Tarui Yoshio 55 , 182

‘Surrealist avant-garde’ 65

Tezuka, Miwako 79, 170

‘Surrealist camp’ (Shururearisumu no

jin’ei) 93, 95 Surrealist object 9 , 66 , 68 , 73 – 4 ,

84, 90–9, 102, 106–7, 111, 121, 125–7, 134, 136, 150, 161, 171–2 Surrealist orientation 25, 34, 36, 38,

111, 125, 142

Tomii, Reiko 172

Tone Yasunao 174 Toyama Usaburō 28 Tsuchiya Yoshio 125–6 US-Japan Security Treaty (Anpo) 167,

174, 177

Surrealist painting 1 – 4 , 6 – 7 , 16 – 17 ,

24–5, 36–7

van Doesburg, Theo 37 , 156

Surrealist poetry 21 , 43 , 69 , 73 , 120

Volk, Alicia 53

Surrealist psychology 101, 211 n.51 ‘surreality’ 42, 45, 67–8, 87

Walker, Ian 6

visual art 1, 4, 8, 19, 24, 26, 37–8, 69

Wells, H. G. 157

Surrealist photography in 1930’s Japan

4–5, 7–8, 16–17, 25, 36–7, 45–6, 59, 67, 74, 112, 122, 146, 150–1, 164–5, 167–72, 191 n.51, 205–6 n.63

Wilson, Sandra 155 Yamada Kōshun 26 , 52

Yamada Satoshi 66 Yamaguchi Katsuhiro 170 Yamamoto Kansuke 7 , 49 , 51 , 155,

Tajima Tsugio 69 , 107, 110, 132, 134– 5 ,

160, 182 Takahashi Wataru 120, 130– 4 , 131, 182,

221 n.46

160–1, 162, 163, 168, 183, 223 n.78, 223 n.89 Yamanaka Chirū 7, 37–8, 40, 41, 42–3,

44, 45–9, 52, 56–7, 69, 82, 89,

Takashina Shūji 5

92–6, 100, 106, 111–12, 119–20,

Takeba Jō 8, 156, 214 n.8, 219 n.88

124, 135–6, 147, 151–3, 155–6, 158, 164, 183, 198 n.22, 199 n.36, 199 n.42, 200 n.49, 200 n.53, 208 n.8, 210 n.35, 210 n.49, 217 n.46, 218 n.81

Takiguchi Shūzō 2 , 17 , 28 , 37 , 47 , 56 – 9 ,

65, 67–70, 73, 82, 89, 92, 94, 96–9, 111–13, 118–19, 120, 122–7, 131–2, 134, 136, 141, 143, 145, 147, 154, 157, 161, 163–4, 170–4, 182, 198 n.12, 200 n.46,

Yamawaki Iwao 22 – 4 Yasui Nakaji 7 , 71 – 4 , 72 , 76 , 77 – 8 , 83 – 4 ,

202 n.96, 209 n.29, 213 n.96, 216 n.36, 216 n.40, 226 n.33

Yoshihara Jirō 28

Tanpei Photography Club (Tanpei Shashin

Kurabu) 16, 21, 70–1, 187

97, 130, 183, 191 n.46 Yumiko Iida 129