If you had asked a patriotic Japanese official for a representative image of Japan in the seventies - for something that conveyed the reality and essence of the period - it is likely that you would have received two photographs. The first would be a photograph of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and the second would be one of the Osaka 1970 World Expo - two photographs of urbanity that show a prosperous nation fully emerged from the ashes of war, or, as Paul Droubie vividly describes, a “phoenix arisen” (Droubie 2319). Indeed, it is equally likely that you would not have received a photograph taken by the counter-cultural photographer Daido Moriyama. After all, with the success of economic policies such as Ikeda’s income doubling plan sending Japan hurtling towards a booming consumer economy at unprecedented speeds, it seemed as though “Japan could do no wrong” (Lessem 196). It would seem unlikely, therefore, for the dystopian imagery that Moriyama’s photography is famous for to be representative of a reality of a period so well defined by a sense of prosperity, affluence and success.

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Figure 1. Three Lions. Yoyogi National Gymnasium. TOKYO 1964. Olympic Movement. Web. 17 Dec. 2015. Source
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Figure 2. Marui, Takato. Osaka Expo 70 Kodak & Ricoh Pavilion. 12 Apr. 1970. Flickr. Web. 17 Dec. 2015. Source


Yet it is an intention of capturing exactly this reality of the Japanese experience which forms the basis of Moriyama’s work. Indeed, the notion of the “real” has long been a thematic fixation of Moriyama’s and exists in a peculiar tension within his photography. “For me,” he says, “photography is not a means by which to create beautiful art, but a unique way of encountering genuine reality” (Kugelberg). Indeed, this notion of “encountering… reality” is perhaps the idea on which Moriyama develops the framework behind his photographic technique. Drawing on methods pioneered by William Klein in his 1956 photobook Life Is Good & Good for You, for example, Moriyama’s visual encounters with urban Japan have been products of “moving camera angles” that “[reflect] his bodily movements and the rhythm of his breathing” (Shimizu 54). In other words, his approach to taking photos have been characterized by a sense of spontaneity and genuineness - an attempt perhaps to simulate and capture a “real” and literal encounter of the city. It is a technique that directly contrasts itself with the “fixed angles” and “[careful composition]” that defined the “straight photography” which we might see in the “conventional, beautiful [photographs]” (54) of the Olympics and the World Expo.

At the same time, however, a careful look at any Moriyama photograph reveals an artificiality in its production. It is here where the peculiar tension between Moriyama’s work and notions of the “real” Japan lies. Indeed, as Shimizu highlights, the “flowing, grainy, blurry, out of focus” aesthetic that both Klein and Moriyama pioneered were as much a product of the aforementioned spontaneity as they were a product of a “frictional reality” built on “every artificial method possible” (54). The careful overexposure on the outline of the child and the underexposure of the sides in his photograph Boy, Miyagi, Japan (1973), for example, is clearly the result of a deliberate and conscious push by Moriyama against the limits of his film in the darkroom. Moreover, the very idea that there exists an aesthetic instantly attributable to the “auteur” Moriyama Daido is undoubtedly reflective of the creative control that he is exerting over his work. Undoubtedly, it is this very influence that problematizes and almost contradicts the level of “realness” that Moriyama attempts to embody through his work.

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Figure 3. Moriyama, Daido. Boy, Matsushima, Miyagi. 1974. Stephen Cohen Gallery, Los Angeles. Photography Now. Web. 17 Dec. 2015. Source


The image generated from the response of our fictional Japanese official and that of Moriyama Daido’s photography therefore co-exist in an interesting tension of realism. Not only do we have competing images of the seventies that claim to represent a new, postwar Japanese reality on opposing sides of a spectrum, but in Moriyama’s photographs we also have an image that actively seeks to challenge the characterization of Japan set by the other. In other words, it is arguable that the reality presented in Moriyama’s photography is one that is reacting towards the reality of Japan that the images of affluence and prosperity appear to suggest. Indeed, while Moriyama himself actively denies the impossibility of distilling the practice of photography into themes (Moriyama, “The Shock” 30), he has still indirectly expressed his pleasure at the ability of his photographs to convey “something about the identity of modern Japan” (Moriyama, “The Unflinching Lens”). This statement in turn is particularly evocative of an underlying purpose - if not an admitted one - of Moriyama’s photography, one which of course seeks to posit a particular identity of Japanese modernity.

Interestingly, while both the image of affluence and prosperity and the image presented by Moriyama Daido are in contention with each other, they are also both arguably representative of three things: 1. the “official,” if not popular image of Japan that characterized its postwar period as one of recovery and affluence, 2. the assumption of reality deeply embedded in the photographic medium, and 3. the ability the of urbanity and representations of urbanism to function as a site for the visual enactment of ways to communicate the experience of a nation. It is through an exploration of these three points, particularly in the way in which they are in dialog with the construction of the “reality” of late sixties and seventies Japan, that forms both an interesting point of inquiry into understanding both this period in Japanese history as well as the photography of Moriyama Daido. This framework will therefore form the basis of the analysis that this paper hopes to pursue.

Earlier, it was posited that Moriyama’s photography is reacting towards a particular, “official” image of Japan. This image has not been described in great detail beyond the brief introduction in the opening paragraph, and must therefore be first addressed before any analysis of the photographer himself can be pursued. To do so, we begin with the notion that Japan’s identity begins to flux as it entered the postwar period. Indeed, with a desire to “rise from the ashes of war” (Droubie 2319), the nation arguably hurtled towards the pursuit of a “new national identity” (2319). It would of course be impossible to identify one particular image that defined this shift. The image of a Japan based on “peace and international cooperation” that is espoused most clearly in the Olympics (2319), for example, is certainly as valid as the “‘boom’ identity… of prosperity” which Konagaya identifies in the Japanese appropriation of American Christmas cakes (134). We are able, however, to distill these new identities down into two points of commonality. Borrowing again from the example of the Olympics and the Christmas cake, these are: first, the idea that this new identity speaks in totality - that is say, it is a representative “image,” one that is able to communicate a “reality” and completely define the conception of Japan during this period - and second, that there is a common thread of positivity, affluence and success that appears to run throughout most of the new identities. Indeed, this is why both Konagaya and Droubie speak of these new identities in terms of characterizing “Japanese society” and “national identity,” two terms which imply a totality in the scope of representation.

Certainly, to define this image of positivity, affluence and prosperity as total would not be completely accurate without proving its assimilation into the discourse of the masses that is popular culture. The clearest manifestation of this turn to positivity can arguably be identified by characterizing the desire of the Japanese middle class. An understanding of what was realistically desired by the masses should, after all, provide an insight of the standards of the time. A way to begin characterizing this desire is to look at the advertising used by consumer-focused corporations of the time. In doing so, we note that advertising campaigns by beauty company Shiseido in particular reflect a sexuality and clean image that would arguably be desirable only by a society that could afford such excess. Advertising for their Beauty Cake line in the sixties, for example, is full of clean, clear colors of blue and white that promote a culture of sophistication, materiality and affluence. Indeed, the very fact that Shiseido would construct a campaign appealing towards such aesthetics would appear to reflect that these are the new standards of the Japanese middle class of the time.

It is however in the successful popularization of concepts such as “My Homeism” (マイホーム主義, mai hoomu shugi) where we see the clearest statistical evidence for the propagation of the image of positivity and affluence into the greater Japanese society. As Beer suggests, “My Homeism” - a form of consumer “individualism” with an intense focus on one’s “nuclear family life” (Beer 43) - implied a “political apathy” that was a “[product] of the increasing prosperity, if not yet affluence, of Japanese society” (43). The successful canonization of the term “three sacred treasures” (三集の神器, sanshuu no jingi) under “My Homeism” is particularly evocative of this prosperity, as it declares the commodities of the television, the washing machine and the refrigerator as not just a desirable but an achievable goal. Interestingly, the fact that the percentage of Japanese society who came to own all three reached almost 90% by 1970 (Yotopoulos) retrospectively suggests that this ideal was indeed a realistically achievable desire. Again, this reveals the degree to which the image of affluence had successfully assimilated into popular discourse, which in turn justifies the totality of said image.

As I initially suggested in the introduction, it is this “official” image of Japan that Moriyama’s photography appears to react against. In particular, it is in the question of realism - whether the “real” Japan of the sixties and seventies is truly represented in such images - that forms the basis of this tension. An understanding of Moriyama’s photography, therefore, must necessarily begin with considering the question of realism in dialog with the photographic medium itself. In doing so, we note interestingly that an assumption of realism exists in the heart of the medium of photography. As film critic Andre Bazin has suggested, already in the French word for lens, objectif, we read an “essentially objective character” in the notion of photography. Art critic Clement Greenberg has also argued in terms of realism, suggesting that “photography’s advantage over painting… lies less in its realism… than in the enormously greater ease and speed with which it achieves its realism” (Shimizu 53). Moriyama himself has called the camera “a machine that copies reality,” an “optical machine of equivalence” (Masafumi 465). It is also particularly interesting that it is Greenberg who identifies reality as being a key variable in considering the photographic medium, given that he is the pioneer of the media specificity thesis. Indeed, the thesis, which encompasses the idea that “each art form, in virtue of its medium, has its own exclusive domain of development” (Caroll 39), suggests that Greenberg does not only value photography for its speedy ability to represent reality, but essentially equates this ability to the value of photography itself. Realism, therefore, is the underlying assumption that powers the affect behind the medium of photography.

Moriyama’s particular take on the question of realism in photography, however, is not so clear cut. Indeed, when Moriyama suggests that the camera “copies reality” (Masafumi), he inserts an element of fictionality into the created image. In other words, the photograph is never exactly reality but an imitation of reality. As Moriyama himself says, “the most original images are only ever copies” (Baker 41) and that the candidness and spontaneity that he tries to communicate in his approach to photography is based on an attempt to “copy an image of a moment” (23). Interestingly, his statement perhaps taps into a deeper discourse around the conception of photography in Japan: the Chinese characters that make up the compound word for “photography” in Japanese in shashin (写真), for example, clearly expresses this idea of copying in the right-most character, which translates in its verb form utsusu (写す) to “to transcribe,” “to duplicate” or to “imitate.” As the following analysis will hope to suggest, this notion of imitating reality, rather than simply existing or functioning as reality becomes an important way by which to understand how Moriyama’s photography is able to be read as representing more of a “real” Japan than its subject matter might otherwise suggest.

Certainly, this idea of “imitation” and “fictionality” which Moriyama introduces into his photography complicates the idea that it represents a “real” Japan. As I suggested in the introduction, this is a complication further underlined by the “official” image of Japan, which not only appeared to dominate the popular perception of the nation at least during the sixties and seventies, but also existed in juxtaposition to the Japan that Moriyama portrayed in his photography. The solution to this conundrum lies in putting Moriyama’s particular photographic style in dialog with postmodern aesthetics. After all, it is in the are, bure, bokeh (アレ ブレ ボケ) technique, or what is often translated as “grainy/rough, blurry, out-of-focus,” which was popularized and pioneered by Moriyama in the sixties through the Provoke photography magazine where we see both the greatest distortion of reality and the greatest attempt to accurately communicate a sense of reality. Indeed, it has perhaps also been the effective negotiation of this paradox that has elevated Moriyama’s photography into a position of influence and prestige when compared to the other photographers of the Provoke magazine. The distortion of reality is of course easily identifiable in any Moriyama photograph that contains a human subject - faces, for example, are often either concealed by darkness or blur or distorted in angle - while the communication of reality will form the subject of the analysis that follows.

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Figure 4. Moriyama, Daido. Provoke no. 2. 1969. Web. Source


Moriyama’s place in the modernist-postmodern spectrum has often been a topic of debate among scholars of his work. As Hiro Rika suggests in her essay Between Absence and Presence: Exploring Video Earth’s What is Photography? whether “Moriyama’s work falls under the category of modernism or postmodernism” exists as a question in itself (Hiro). Indeed, he is often spoken of as overcoming or building upon certain tenets of modernity - such as “the pendulum movement” which Shimizu describes in his essay Grainy, Blurry, Out-of-Focus: Daido Moriyama’s Farewell Photography (Shimizu 51) - but is never quite discussed directly in terms of postmodernist frameworks, though Shimizu’s later essays are a notable exception. This is particularly interesting, given that the way Moriyama perceives the relationship between reality and photography is extremely reminiscent of the discourse around Baudrillian simulacra that has come to define postmodern aesthetic theory. Frederic Jameson in particular has declared “the culture of the image or the simulacrum” to be a “constitutive feature of the postmodern” (6) in his landmark essay, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. As we will see, reading the simulacra in Moriyama is particularly productive to understanding the nature of reality that he communicates in his photography.

It is in Moriyama’s take on the notion of “imitation” and “copying” reality where we find the clearest manifestation of simulacra in his photography. In particular, he has described the act of “copying” which he engages through photography to be the production of a “kind of fiction” that leads to the “[discovery of] another type of reality or realism” (Yeoh). In essence, the act of discovering reality through imitation mirrors the “[substitution of] the signs of the real for the real” (Baudrillard 2) which forms the basis of the Baudrillian model of simulacra. The are, bure, bokeh aesthetic contributes to this by the act of de-contextualization that allows for the continuous repetition, representation and re-representation of signs among his body of work. This in turn allows for the technique of “grainy, blurry, out-of-focus” to “[drain] color from the meaning and content that can be found in normal photographs,” annihilate “meaning,” “expression” and the “sense of the photographer,” and subsequently present a picture of urban life as “bare truth,” or simply in “the way [it is]” (57). The photo of a crouched man on all fours from the photobook Shinjuku Station from Japan: A Photo Theatre (1968) for example, has famously been compared to the photo Stray dog, Misawa (1971). This relation reduces the focus on the literal reality and instead drives towards a more innate “essence.” In this case, for example, Moriyama brings out an experience of the city and its people that is characterized by a repressed bestiality and alienation, something which is further highlighted by the visual violence created in the high monochrome contrast on the bodies of both subjects. To put it more simply, the mechanism of simulacra allows Moriyama’s photographs to display the true “essence” of reality by eschewing a literal, visual presentation of said reality.

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Figure 5. Moriyama, Daido. Shinjuku. 1968. Shinjuku Station from Japan: A Photo Theatre. 1968. Print. Source
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Figure 6. Moriyama, Daido. Stray Dog, Misawa. Shinjuku. Stray Dog. 1971. Print. Source


The accuracy of Moriyama’s representation of reality therefore lies not in its literal, visual representation but in the experience or affect that his photographs induce. This is why Moriyama’s photography may be said to communicate a greater level of reality than the clean “official” image of Japan may convey, despite the fact that this “official” image may literally be a more visually accurate representation of Japan in the sixties and seventies. As Baker suggests, an understanding of “Moriyama’s work in the late 1960s and early 1970s” requires us to “remember the sites of their original productions, as short photo-essays in magazines, but also his own compilation of these projects in his photobooks” (Baker 25). In other words, it is certainly the generation of an experience that Moriyama prioritizes in his photography. To flip through the photobook Shinjuku, 19XX-20XX, for example, is to encounter the urban space of Shinjuku both spatially and temporally. This is in contrast to consuming photographs in terms of stills, which places more emphasis on what is visually depicted in the photograph itself. Indeed, it is known that Moriyama was consciously aware of this: as Shimizu indicates, he deliberately attempted to take “photographs out of their context” and show them as pictures “in an apparently random fashion” in reaction to his discomfort with his photography being viewed as documentary (55).

This notion of experience is particularly important because it too informs the particular reality of Japan in the sixties and seventies that Moriyama’s photographs appear to convey. In particular, this is a sense of disillusionment, social estrangement and loss that stands in stark contrast to the images of prosperity, wealth and happiness that the “official” images of the 1964 Olympics and the motif of the Christmas cake would suggest. In other words, the disjointed and fragmented experience of a Moriyama photobook reflects the similarly disjointed and fragmented experience of society which Moriyama describes as being a society “distorted” (Yeoh). This experience is most clearly understood once again in dialog with postmodern aesthetics, with a particular focus on the subject/object relation. In Moriyama’s photography, both the subject of the photo and the subject who encounters the photo (us) is decentered and dissolves. The former is evidently achieved through the are, bure, bokeh style and the latter is achieved through the careful curation of an “experience” which was recently outlined. Indeed, Jameson’s description of Warhol’s Diamond Dust Shoes, in which nothing “organizes even a minimal place for the viewer” (8) mirrors Moriyama’s curation technique. As Jameson further suggests, it is this decentering and disconnection that the subject feels which defines the postmodern experience: no longer able to define his or herself against an Other, the subject fragments and “dies” (15). The result of this new way of experiencing society is undoubtedly the sense of disillusionment, loss of identity and estrangement which appears to be exactly the “experience” that Moriyama has crafted through his photographs. The experience of the viewer flipping through a photobook like Shinjuku, 19XX - 20XX is therefore one that mimics this experience.

To complete our discussion of an “urban” photographer such as Moriyama Daido, we must necessarily return to the question of the city. Indeed, it is an interesting phenomenon that both the “official” image of Japan of the sixties and seventies and the image that Moriyama Daido constructs are mediated through urban spaces. Indeed, numerous Moriyama photobooks have been named after dense, urban spaces, if not cities: three books and several exhibitions have Shinjuku in their name, while Osaka and even Paris find themselves on other books. Certainly, one way to understand this is to again fall back on postmodern aesthetics. The “mind-numbing sensorial barrage” (Mirrlees) that we experience in the bustle of a modern city (especially one as expansive as Tokyo), for example, has been cited by Jameson as having engineered a postmodern “hyperspace” (10). The sublimity inherent in such a total space - one where humans no longer “have the perceptual equipment” to properly comprehend the urban experience - arguably allows the city and urbanity to function as way of negotiating these similarly total and all-encompassing experiences. This is certainly true of both Moriyama’s dystopia and of the grand positivity that we see in the “official” image of Japan.

In the case of Moriyama Daido, however, the city also presents a compelling way by which to communicate reality through experience. As simulacra - a dense confluence of visual signs, physical spaces and human identities - a city is in many ways a living photobook, as Baker suggests, and therefore functions as “the most efficient means” for a photographer to “[transcribe] an attitude to experience that reaches beyond the competency of the camera” (Baker 36). As Nakahira describes, Klein’s use of New York functions as a “bundle of fragmentary images,” one which, when consumed in totality, allows “the men, women, children and things” to “lose their three-dimensionality” and function instead as mere building blocks of the “huge nightmare space of New York” (Nakahira, qtd. in Baker 35). Moriyama’s use of Tokyo and of Shinjuku in particular is functions in exactly the same mode. As Baker indicates, this “nightmare” is one that cannot exist as “the product of any one image but of the disorientation and disarticulation engendered by an onrush of images as intense and visceral as the experience of walking out into crowded New York streets” (Baker 36). The abstraction allowed by an urban space therefore brings with it all the implications - the subject/object deconstruction, et cetera - that the medium of the photobook provides. It is therefore no surprise that Moriyama chooses the city when attempting to convey the “real” experience of Japan.

As this paper has hoped to suggest, the photography of Moriyama Daido presents to us an interesting conundrum: the use of an imitation of reality to portray a reality more real than the popular, “official” reality. The medium of photography presents to us questions of realism and reality which are then re-negotiated in the urban space of the city, further complicating the complexity that is Daido Moriyama. It is a curious thing, however, that one could accurately suggest that Moriyama himself would not have cared which reality you accepted as being truly representative of Japan. “There are various realities within the perceived social reality,” says Moriyama Daido, “And that is what interests me.”

Works Cited
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» Moriyama, Daido. Shinjuku Station from Japan: A Photo Theatre. 1968. Print.
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» Moriyama, Daido. Stray Dog, Misawa. Shinjuku. Stray Dog. 1971. Print.
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