Seibei Kashima

Mount Fuji from Kashiwabara, 1890.

View of Miyajima, 1890.

Before I started thinking about this piece, I started getting the feeling that I was out of good ideas as to what I could write about. I've written about music, and art, and film. I started asking myself: what else is there? And for a while, I found myself unable to answer that question! Until it hit me: photography. In the present (as in the past) photography has occupied a strange place in peoples minds. It's certainly got artistic aspects, but it also has very technical aspects. Photography is used to capture moments in a way our memories cannot, but there are also those who compose photographs for artistic reasons. At any rate, I decided to look into the history of photography in Japan, and it is certainly an interesting story. However, to keep this concise, I decided to write about Seibei Kashima—an amateur photographer who rose to prominence during the Meiji era.

Kashima was born in 1866—only a few years before emperor Meiji ascended to the throne—in Osaka, but was adopted at an early age by a family of sake brewers in Tokyo. It wouldn't be long before he took a great interest in photography. It was only in 1848 that the first

Torii at Itsukashima, 1890.

camera arrived in Japan, brought to Nagasaki by Dutch traders. However, during the Meiji era, Japan was opened to trade with the west, which brought new opportunities. When Kashima reached the age of about 19, he requested private lessons from renowned photographer Reiji Esaki. For the next year and a half he served as Esaki's assistant, during which he developed a great sense of enthusiasm for the craft. Several years later, he would work with yet Ogawa Kazumasa, who helped introduce the dry plate process to Japan, and W.K. Burton, an English engineer, who became founders of the Japan Photographic Society (日本写真会, Nihon Shashinkai)—Kashima would also become a member.

Kashima is well remembered because he was one of the first amateur photographers to rise to prominence—after all, this was still a time in which photography required equipment beyond the means of most individuals. Kashima was a member of a wealthy family, and used his wealth to pursue this particular avocation. However, he was instrumental in popularizing photographic studios in Japan, as well as the manufacturing of photographic materials in Japan, which would otherwise need to be imported at high expense.

Wetsu Kashima, 1890s.

 One particular episode in his life, for which he has become remembered, was an affair with a geisha named Ponta (ぽん太). He was married at the time, resulting in something of a scandal. The two later married, after Kashima divorced his current wife, and she took the name Wetsu Kashima (鹿嶋ゑつ). She would also go on to support the family, as Seibei was injured later in life during a photography accident—I'm afraid details are scarce as to what may have actually gone wrong.


Similar to another figure I've written about, his eccentric lifestyle earned him enough notoriety to be the subject of a short story by Mori Ougai called "Hyaku Monogatari" (百物語, A Roung of Ghost Stories). A Kindle version is available for free, if you are able to read Japanese. Unfortunately, I've been unable to track down many more photographs than are presented here, though they can be found here.

読んで、ありがとう。

Spotify Playlist, Hougaku

It should come as no surprise by now that I am a fan of Japanese music-- of music in general, for that matter. This presents me with something of a dilemma, because I feel that I could dedicate an entire blog to Japanese music, but then I won't have time to write about art and literature and other topics. So, I've gone to the trouble of creating a playlist on Spotify: Hougaku. This will allow me to share Japanese music, while keeping up my efforts on other topics. Not that I'll stop writing about music here-- this playlist consists of more mainstream types of music. Every now and then I'll write about folk or experimental/avant-garde groups and singers.

Kazuki Tomokawa

Kazuki Tomokawa, c.a. 1975

The appeal of folk music isn't difficult to understand. Music, starting in the 1950s, has been dominated by popular forms of music, such as rock and roll. At first, these new popular styles were influenced by traditional sounds and styles, but as time went on it pop has grown into what we know today. For this reason, people have sought out more substantial forms of music, and folk music is one such avenue. In light of the westernization of Japanese culture in post-war Japan, it's no wonder that there was also a resurgence of Japanese folk music. The height of folk music in Japan was in the 1970s, and in the midst of it was Kazuki Tomokawa (友川 かずき).

(Presumably) a work of Tomokawa's art

I specifically waited until today to write this particular piece, because it 64 years ago today that Tomokawa was born under the name of Tenji Nozoki (及位典司), later adopting Kazuki Tomokawa as his gou or art name. The use of such pseudonyms is is a common practice among artists from East Asia. While his music is the most accessible form of media to western audiences, Tomokawa has been active as a poet, painter, essayist, and bicycle race commentator—this fact reminds me a bit of how author Haruki Murakami is an avid runner.

His distinctive vocal style has earned him the moniker of "the screaming philosopher." During his high school days, he discovered poetry—particularly the poetry of Chuuya Nakahara (中原 中也)—becoming an avid reader. It wasn't until the 1970s that he began to set his poetry to music. That being said, he continues to produce music, even today.

Hanabana no kashitsu, cover

As has been the case with a lot of these pieces, there is a dearth of information available in English about Tomokawa. However, a documentary called La Faute des Fluers—named for his 1993 album Hanabana no kashitsu—was produced in 2010, and can be found in three installments on youtube.



Many of Tomokawa's albums can be purchased from the Amazon—albeit, in Japanese. For those curious about his art work, he produced a book of his visual art in the 1990s called Aozora (青空) available for 3,049 ¥—about 30 USD.


読んで、ありがとう。

Yume wa Yoru Hiraku

Just listen.

Yume wa Yoru Hiraku (夢は夜ひらく, Dreams Bloom at Night) is an example of enka, a style that combines traditional Japanese music with influences from jazz and rock and roll. Keiko Fuji's version of the song (the third from the video), was released in the 1970s, helping to maintain the popularity of the genre during the 1970s.

Running in Tokyo

When I began this project, I thought that an update schedule of once a week was appropriate. That would give me enough time, from week to week, to get ideas about what to write about, and then to research them enough so that I can at least appear a little knowledgeable about the subject. But, I've always had it in mind to write more frequently, but not on such long topics as I do on the weekends. Now that I've been doing this for about a month, I've started to find little bits of information that, while interesting, don't necessarily lend themselves to long stories, so I've decided to start posting smaller pieces, during the week, while I work on the longer ones.

Map of common running routes in Tokyo.

Last Saturday, I found myself walking in Federal Hill—on the way to what has become my favorite sushi bar—and decided to stop into a small bookstore that I've walked by a few times. I really just wanted to look, but when I go into bookstore, an impulse buy is never far behind, and this time I found they had a copy of Haruki Murakami's What I Talk about When I Talk about Running. Clearly, I had to buy it. Later that evening, I al --so came across this study, which takes composites of data about where people run in different cities in the world.

"As long as I can run a certain distance, that's all I care about... This is the same sort of tack I find necessary when writing a novel. I stop every day right at the point where I feel I can write more. Do that, and the next day's work goes surprisingly smoothly... To keep on going, you have to keep up a rhythm. This is the important thing for long-term projects." — Haruki Murakami

Takashi Murakami and superflat

First Day of Summer, June 21, 2011

First, I have to apologize for not writing for a while-- I've been in the process of moving to a new city, and I've just about finished setting up things in my new apartment (including an internet connection), and have been quite busy. At any rate, I wanted to jump back in with yet another form of media altogether. After some thinking, I thought maybe it's about time to do something that is related to anime and manga, so I did a little reading, and came across Takashi Murakami (村上 隆).

Sunrise at Futamigaura, Kunisada

When I started out my research on this topic, I had one question really in mind: where did the visual style of anime and manga come from? Part of the answer came in the form of the term superflat. This term was coined by Murakami to describe the general aesthetics of Japanese art. Whereas as western art had developed a tradition of trying to convey depth and a sense of three dimensions, Japanese art has been characterized by compositions of 2-dimensional shapes and large fields of color. This can be seen, for example, woodblock prints called ukiyo-e (浮世絵).


Murakami took this analysis a step further, applying the term superflat to Japanese society after the end of the second World War, when social stratification became less pronounced, and there has been a perceived lessening/shallowing of emotion, and an increase in consumerism.

Self-Portrait of the Manifold Worries
of a Manifoldly Distressed Artist

Murakami has taken the aesthetic principle and social ethos of superflat, and used this as an opportunity to create art. The imagery Murakami employs is as visually striking as it is labor intensive, relying on the creation of many layers of simple, 2-dimensional figures, such as the field of flowers seen to the left. Murakami also relies on a blurring of lines between high art and low art, as he incorporates stylings from anime and manga and borrows from otaku subculture to provide a wider social commentary.

Murakami has written extensively about Japanese art including Superflat, where he discusses the history behind contemporary Japanese visual art, and Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture, which explores the artistic and social history of anime an manga.

読んで、ありがとう。