I know, and you may know. Japan has experienced days before WWII. Back then, you were not allowed any personal expressions including artistic and emotional ones. You were “destined to make national contribution for the war,” so to speak.
My recent visits to Nakaji Yasui’s exhibition made me think deeper upon the matter. Photography in Japan may have not fully recovered from back then. Photography is, I believe, a form of art, and it is very personal. However in current Japan, photography is still heavily caught in the realm of “recording things,” which was the only way allowed back then for the purpose of propaganda. Photography is not only about “visiting and collecting images of an exotic place of the world”!
I can talk more about the subject, but I shall be quiet here. “I don’t know about art, but I know what I like,” I shall say. I keep working in my own way. Similar or different from others? I shall not worry about it. KT
Koyo Tamaki, photographic artist 