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• 1 2019-12-27T12:48:13-05:00 Snappy Family 27 The cultural and gendered shifts from portrait to happy snap image_header 7792 2020-10-02T06:44:10-04:00 Emily Chapman

  Before cameras were something families could afford to buy and use at home, photographs were composed, taken, and developed by photography studios. Photographers took the photographs in their studios through advanced booking or walk-in trade, and they also travelled to customer’s houses or pre-designated locations. Having your photo taken in a studio was an experience that cost money, generated a story to tell others, and provided evidence which could be displayed at home, carried on one’s body, or kept safe for future viewers.

  By the 1930s, the photographic act was an established middle–class family habit, but one which, following the progression of Japan’s war in China, was almost universally interrupted as metal, chemicals, rubber, leather, bodies, and free time were mobilized for the war effort. Following Japanese surrender in August 1945, the postwar households of Japan renewed the practice of family photography with remarkable swiftness, and resumed buying, selling, using, and breaking cameras and associated paraphernalia in a sustained upward trend until 1990.

  The particular surge of camera ownership in the late 1950s was heralded as “camera fever” (kamera netsu), and was buoyed by increased international export and a growing international reputation for the “Japanese Camera.”  At the centre of this fever were male amateur photographers, a substantial portion of whom were otōsan kameraman (camera man fathers). Anecdotally, these new cultural figures were said to only emerge on Sundays, and were found with their cameras, capturing their families at leisure in parks and popular picnic spots rather than documenting the domestic spaces and labours of house and home. The photographs these Sunday photographers were taking were mainly posed portraits, or kinen shashin. However, starting in the early 1950s, the kinen shashin was criticised for its old-fashioned feel, as commentators lamented that the stiff expressions in photographs came from forced poses that were produced by the familiar refrain to stop and pose. Instead, the zeitgeist called on amateurs to “snap” (snappu).

  The “snap” was initially more defined by its opposition to the posed photograph than by any prescriptive coordinates of style. In contrast to kinen shashin, for example, it was not expected to be taken as part of an institutionally-sanctioned record. Snaps were resolutely personal, informal, and designed to be taken quickly and instinctively. Lauded in postwar amateur photography discourse, the “snap” was described as the only way the amateur photographer could really catch reality and the best way to ensure photographs were more emotionally accurate. The development of the happy snapper and the photos they took had two influences. The first was the postwar artistic turn toward realism, or rearizmu, taken by Japanese art photographers, a thorough account of which has been made by Julia Thomas (2008). The second influence was the profit ambitions of the national camera industry. The encouragement to snap away was aimed at both reducing the skills barrier holding people back from having a camera and at getting people to use and buy more exposures. Snap advocacy was specifically geared at getting women behind the lens and getting everyday family life in the frame. The assumed daily, physical contact women had with their children was seen as the optimum condition for “snapping,” whereas photographs that benefitted from physical distance, such as outings or school sports’ days (undō kai), were suggested as more appropriate subjects for fathers to capture.

  There are two threads concerning how the snap folds into Isao's story. The first is in the development of his style of photography. While he did experiment with the snappu he largely preferred posed photographs. Second, the scarcity of snaps in the family albums  reflects how he spent his time and the time-space constraints of the snap. The snappish turn that professionals advocated were unrealistic for many otōsan kameraman; capturing your child napping, fighting, or lost in play was therefore handed to the emergent figure of the snappy mother.

• 1 media/The newlyweds pose outside the Atami Ocean Hotel 1 January 1941.jpg 2019-11-18T17:24:06-05:00 Absence and image 18 Thinking with the family photograph to consider the meeting points of absence, presence and image plain 5473 2020-12-03T09:31:19-05:00 Emily Chapman

  Look at the photograph above; when an unknown photographer took this photograph of a moderately wealthy family in his studio in northeastern Japan’s Tōhoku region, the father was not there. The studio, although designed to be invisible, is revealed to viewers upon closer inspection; notice the mock-grand door frame behind the group and the painted outline of a door behind the partly pulled curtain. One business day, a professional photographer took this photograph of the assembled family group – six children, their grandmother or maid, and a young woman who was likely the mother of one, some, or all of the children. However, using a technique known as kessei waku or “frame of absence,” the photographer materialised the absent patriarch. The resulting effect is that father seems to float and preside over the family image, which is as comical as it is indicative of the aesthetic malleability of both the photographic moment and the social purpose of the image. In the case of this unknown family, the floating father reinforces the purpose of the family photograph as an exercise designed to display all members. It also suggests that the photograph offered a way to be present while absent echoing the routine Isao was exercising in his photographs of Eiko and the children as he began to step behind the camera.

  The potential of the family photograph as a source and the reason it is worth "thinking with" (Darnton, 1984) when we think about the family in Japan, is because it pushes us to talk differently about men's absence in postwar Japan as well as the appearances of absence in our archives. Perhaps it is better to say it pushes us to talk more widely about men's movement in and around their family particularly in questioning the gendered power play behind who or what is "made visible" in the historic record - both personal and public (Thomas 2008). The artificiality of the floating figurehead while a practical solution to absence and producing comic effect, prompts a greater sensitivity on the visual charade of completeness particularly at work in group photos. What happens, however, if one person has to take the photograph? In Album 1 there is a single image which emphasises not only that Isao and his family's expectation that he is the visual labourer behind their photographic record, but also that this is a labour which is gendered as male. The story of that photograph follows the image on the left. 
  On 3 January 1960, the sun was shining. It was the New Year holiday and Isao, Eiko, and Kazu were visiting the hot spring resort of Izu with their fond friends, regular travel companions, and ballroom dancers, the Iwabuchis. Before setting off for a day’s sightseeing, the two families stood in front of their parked cars, huddled together, and smiled for the camera. Unfamiliar to the Yajimas, they would pose for two photographers before setting off that morning. Iwabuchi Sensei took the first photograph.  Before he clicked the shutter, the group organised into two clusters of three bodies. As Iwabuchi Sensei looked through the viewfinder, on the left was the Yajima family; Eiko stood on edge of the group, her arm touching Isao’s, and Isao put his arm around Kazu’s shoulders, pulling him closer and disturbing the centre-line of the image. To the right, Mrs Iwabuchi stood upright, and her two young children stood close together and stared ahead. Iwabuchi Sensei took the photograph, then Isao uncurled his arm from Kazu and walked over to take the camera and took the second photograph. This time, as Iwabuchi Sensei returned from behind the camera, the group split into men and women to retain the balance of two clusters of three bodies. 
  
  Isao went on to devote three pages of Album 1 to this day trip, and he chose to start the sequence with these two images. At first glance, the narrative statement these two photos make appears clear – this was taken at the outset, before the day’s trip, these are the people who were there, and you can expect to see all or some of them in the photos that follow. However, looking at the space between the photos – the material, papery space on the album page – the waiting between the photos becomes manifest through Iwabuchi Sensei and Isao seeming to travel across the images. It is affirming to the wider argument of this module that only the fathers take the photographs but more emphatic is the sense that the province and privilege of movement is one monopolised as male. So, while the absent hardworking father might scaffold discourses of postwar masculinity and fathering in Japan, this is twinned with a largely invisible pulse of constant and free movement. 

• 1 media/The newlyweds pose outside the Atami Ocean Hotel 1 January 1941.jpg 2019-12-30T05:10:56-05:00 "Mama no kamera kyoshitsu" 11 Yoiko magazine (1962) plain 2020-10-02T06:41:47-04:00 Emily Chapman

  In July 1962, the magazine Yoiko printed the first segment in a new series, “mama no kamera kyōshitsu” (mothers’ camera classroom). The famous photographer Yoshioka Senzō (1916–2005) penned the early instalments. He reassured tentative mothers that “even if it is out of focus, it doesn’t matter” (pinboke de mo kamawanai). Yoshioka’s manifesto, outlined in this first instalment, centred on building mothers’ confidence and competence. The stated motivation for mothers to pick up the family camera was not personal interest, but the spectre of an imagined future moment of sitting around the family album.

  Reading “against the grain” of Yoshioka’s treatise of self-improvement, the column outlined the ways in which better photos could make a better mother – closer, more present, and more observant. Like most family photos, this self-improvement was also filtered through a male gaze, first that of Yoshioka, and later in the series, other professional male photographers. For Yoshioka, a better picture was not stage-directed, with children corralled into department store studios or corners of parks and gardens to get the perfect pose, instead it was an everyday affair and a constant awareness of possible photographic moments. Eager to dispel any anxiety over having to always be camera-ready, Yoshioka explained, in light but nonetheless technical language, how cameras are easier than ever to use. These images, he argued, enter the child’s world: “your children’s world is not just outside the home, but inside as well. Make-believe with dolls, parties, splashing around with water and so on are your children’s oasis.” Intentional or otherwise, Yoshioka’s argument was to let the camera in to the very private moments of toddler tantrums, afternoon naps, and free–form play in order to expand the concept of which domestic spaces should be visible and, as Yoshioka’s list of photographable activities shows, to keep women’s photography within the walls of the home, thus making it into an act of childcare and housework.

  Yoshioka also asked readers to send in their images against which he positioned himself as the classroom teacher. Each month he, and eventually other well-known, male photographers, would judge the submissions and then select a final few which would be printed and perhaps critiqued, with instructions for improvement. The images sent in by readers were compared to each other, as well as to the imagined content of families’ albums. For example, to encourage readers to try close-ups in August 1962, Yoshioka instructed them to first “look at the photos you’ve taken to date in your albums. Probably you’ll find there are very few close-ups.” He suggests that good moments for catching a close-up he suggests are while your children are watching cartoons on television, while they are eating a sweet treat, while they are reading you (mother) a book, and while they are playing with their friends. Although outwardly simply guiding the taking of better family photographs, Yoshioka and his peers were engaged in the reimagining of everyday family life as a never-ending flow of potential – and potentially lost – photographic moments.

  Over the series’ run, Yoshioka and his peers campaigned for a shift from valuing the perfect setting, to using the camera without your subjects’ knowledge. The familiar refrain was that children should be the main characters (kodomo san wo shūyaku shite) in the images. In the short-term, this involved getting more engrossed in your child’s world when seeking to capture their world-view (and therefore sacrificing your own). The reward for mothers and others was that, years later, when you look at these images in the albums, your memories will be all the richer for having captured the moment and the vitality (iki iki) of your child.

  Yoshioka’s snap evangelism, using the family photograph as its call to arms, dovetailed with manufacturers’ efforts to increase adult women’s camera ownership. The case for more and better photos was not that mothers would find pleasure in photography, but that they were rendering their family a service. Without mothers, as well as fathers, picking up the camera, vital elements of the family record (kiroku) would be lost. The mass predilection for posed photos was already ignoring what really mattered – the act and activity (iki iki) of family life and childhood. “Use a camera like any other type of electrical appliance in your life” encouraged Yoshioka in his attempt normalise camera ownership and use. Lurking within Yoshioka’s association of the camera with domestic appliances was the concept of a newly formalised kind of domestic work – the work of memory keeping. This also implied a more sinister requirement, to account for one’s time.

  The attempt to insert the camera into the category of domestic appliance was made on multiple fronts. In 1959, seasoning giant Ajinomoto included savings stamps on four of its popular products which, if collected in the hundreds, could be put towards a special something for mothers or children. Listed under the “prizes” for mothers were a television set, a refrigerator, an electric washing machine, and a Canon camera. For shoppers familiar with the supposed “three treasures” of a successful middle–class life (a television, refrigerator, and washing machine) the message was clear, you also needed a camera. This was a stark contrast to the prevailing masculine discourses of hobby photography where the camera was something lingered over, lavished with expense, and used carefully.