A STUDY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF GEOGRAPHICAL PHOTOGRAPHY IN JAPAN

Abstract

I. Modern geography in Japan has been closely associated with photography, thus forming the concept of “geographical photography.” The aim of the present study is to analyze its content and modes of utilization, and thereby to elucidate the advent of the concept itself. “Geographical photography” can be defined as a category of photography which has been utilized for geographical research and education in various ways. Excluded from examination is the air photograph for land survey and photo-interpretation, because such a bird's-eye view scarcely reflects the photographer's own judgements, i.e. his intuition about the relevance of particular features of a landscape. Therefore, the author have taken into account only such photographs as are assumed to have been taken upon a geographer's own judgement. The material for analysis has been taken from geographical monographs and from Chirigaku Hyoron (Geographical Review of Japan), vols. 1 (1925)_??_53 (1980).
IL A close analysis reveals that the development of geographical photography in Japan is divided into four stages.
The first stage (1901_??_1926)
The year of 1903 saw the publication of Dai-Nippon Chishi (Japanese geography in general), a monumental work accomplished by Naomasa Yamazaki and Denzo Sato. Its final, tenth volume appeared in 1915. Their authors did not take photographs by themselves, but made efficient use of those taken by professional photographers. Since they had only field cameras and dry plates with low sensitivity, it was inevitable that most of objects were still lives, e. g. buildings (Photo. 1) . Michitoshi Odauchi (1918), in his study on the urbanization of Tokyo and its suburban villages, utilized many photographs that he took himself (Photos 4 and 6). He inserted photographs in his description, and used with a topographical map or a sketch, in order to achieve clarity. Katsue Misawa (1937) observed that “since geogra-phical landscape is an extremely complex organic whole”, its reproduction by photographs is of great use. He further appreciated them as material for the construction of geographical landscape (Photo. 3).
The second stage (1927_??_1944)
At this stage, the notion of Landschaftskunde, introduced from Germany, played a lead-ing role in geographical research. Many papers were written on landscape. Geographers became conscious of what geographical photography was, and utilized photographs in their papers for depicting clearly the interrelation of geographic phenomena, for supplementing statistical data, and so on. Of all the photographs ever appeared in Chirigaku Hyoron, eighty percent were published in this period. The content of photographs and their utilization are quite diverse (see Tables 1 and 2). Now the invention of a rolled film made cameras smal-ler, and it became much easier to take photographs than during the first stage. Finally, Kaoru Tanaka published a well organized book, which is of great academic value, Chigaku Shashin (Geographical photography), and proved the importance of photographs in geogra-phy.
The third stage (1945_??_1960)
After the end of the second World War it became possible to utilize air photographs for academic purposes. This made it possible to make a comprehensive and three dimensional survey of a region. Air-photo interpretation contributed to the accurate land survey in short time, the production of topographical maps, and photo grammetry. Though many photographs were used in individual publications in this stage, we find rapid decrease of photographs in Chirigaku Hyoron. In 1952, Shashin-Chishi Nippon (Photo-Geography of Japan) was publi-shed. It became one of the major works in the development of geographical photography in Japan (Photo. 2). In the 1950's, color film came into general use, but the color tone was far from satisfactory.