安井仲治

Yasui Nakaji was an amateur photographer active in the Taishō and early Shōwa periods. In other words, he was not a commercial photographer who sold his services at a photo studio or took employment as a photojournalist. The term “amateur photographer” was used with pride at the time, denoting someone who exploited the medium for artistic expression. In the 1920s, most of his works fitted the style generally referred to as “geijutsu shashin” (art photography). From around 1930, he turned his eye to the emerging trend of “shinkō shashin” (new photography), before venturing into Surrealism in the second half of the decade. During the final years of a regrettably short life, his masterly images of wartime scenes, often including human figures, gave evidence of a deepened vision. The style shifts he passed through might appear, at first sight, familiar stages in the historical progress of modern Japanese photography, but even as trends came and went, his works always exhibited individuality and originality. Yasui Nakaji was born in 1903 in Higashi Ward (now Chūō Ward), Osaka City, Osaka Prefecture. He was the elder of two sons of Yasui Enjirō and his wife Isoe; the couple also had two daughters. Enjirō operated a wholesale paper business, Yasui Yōshiten, jointly with his older brother Nakazō, which they had established in Hirano-machi in the Senba area of central Osaka. Nakazō and his wife Shizu, having lost their own children, adopted Nakaji in 1914 to secure the main line of the Yasui family. In 1916, Nakazō built a new house in Momijidani, Takarazuka City, Hyogo Prefecture, and from then on, the boy divided his time between this home and the house of his natural father in Osaka. As the son of a wealthy merchant family, Yasui could become familiar with using a camera from an early age. In 1918, he entered the Meisei Commercial School (today’s Osaka Meisei Gakuen), where he formed the A. A. (Association d’Amitié) Society with classmates and actively engaged in exchanging poetry and literary criticism. He also studied French at the school. In January 1922, he joined the Seichō Photography Club, an amateur group in Osaka, and began to publicize his work under a different form of his given name, “Nakaji” (那迦爾). That spring he attracted attention for “Bunriha no kenchiku to sono shūi” 分離派の建築と其周囲 (Secessionist Building and Its Surrounds) (Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art), a photograph taken at the Tokyo Peace Exhibition, and the following September he was accepted into the Naniwa Photography Club, a prestigious amateur association in the Kansai region. He learned pigment printing—for instance, bromoil print and gum print—from Fukumori Hakuyō, Umesaka Ōri, Kometani Kōrō, and Mochizuki Roto, seniors at the club, and strived to create and exhibit works using various techniques. Two works, “Nagameru hitobito” 眺める人々 (Spectators) and “Sarumawashi no zu” 猿廻しの図 (Monkey Trainer) were particularly admired, seen by his peers as expanding the possibilities for photographic expression, and his reputation grew. Featuring ordinary people watching an itinerant street entertainer perform, the images emphasize the gaze lines of the onlookers, capturing the social dynamic of the situation. (The original bromoil prints of both works were destroyed by fire.) Although still young and relatively inexperienced, Yasui was welcomed into the coteries of talented artists active within the Naniwa Photography Club, such as the Tenkyūkai and Ginreisha, and energetically produced and exhibited works. Starting in 1931, he began to shift the base of his activities to the Tampei Photography Club, founded in 1930 by Ueda Bizan and others, and eventually became a leader of the group. Yasui picked up prizes at several national open-call exhibitions, including the Japan Photographic Art Exhibition (organizer: Osaka Mainichi Shimbun; first session, 1926), the Japan Photography Grand Salon (organizer: Osaka Asahi Shimbun; first session, 1926), and the International Photography Salon (organizer: Tokyo Asahi Shimbun; first session, 1927). He was also appointed a judge at these exhibitions in the 1930s. Feature articles appeared introducing his innovative photography, including in Asahi Camera (September 1936 issue) and Shashin Saron (Photo Salon) (February 1937 issue), making him a household name. From the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, the activities of amateur photographers were gradually constrained by tangible and intangible forces. A type of “reportage photography,” dedicated to promoting the nation’s prestige, came to the fore. For instance, Yasui and other artists of the Tampei Club photographed ill and wounded soldiers recuperating in hospital in 1940 for a series called “Hakui Yūshi” 白衣勇士 (Soldier in White). The images were published in a photo magazine the following year. He and his colleagues nevertheless continued to use photography for artistic expression, as distinct from promoting state policy. The results their independent activities can be seen in the photo book “Hikari” 光 (Light) published by the Tampei Photography Club in 1940 to commemorate the group’s tenth anniversary. In the spring of 1941, six members (Yasui, Kawasaki Kametarō, Kōno Tetsu, Shiihara Osamu, Tabuchi Kaneyoshi, and Tezuka Yutaka) went to Kobe and took photographs there of Jewish refugees who had escaped Nazi-occupied Europe. The works were compiled and exhibited by the club as “Rūbō Yudaya” 流氓ユダヤ (Wandering Jews). While the subject matter could be considered journalistic, Yasui took pride in the artistic expression they achieved—above and beyond photojournalism. In October 1941, reflecting his prominence, he was invited to deliver a lecture entitled “The Development of Photography and Its Artistic Aspects” as part of the “Lecture Series for the People under the New Order” organized by the Asahi Shimbun. Already ill by the time he gave the presentation, Yasui died of renal failure six months later, on March 15, 1942, at the age of 38. The following month, friends organized a posthumous exhibition to honor him. Most of the images in “Anthology of Photographic Works by Yasui Nakaji,” edited by Ueda Bizan and published that August in a limited edition of 50, are thought to have come from this exhibition. These major photographic works, together with their negatives, are believed to have perished during the air raids on Osaka in March 1945. Other primary source materials, however, fortunately survived at the artist’s residence in Takarazuka. The transcript of the address that Yasui had prepared with the last of his strength in 1941 appeared in print among the collected Asahi Shimbun lectures published in August 1942 (Note 1). Choosing his words carefully, he had expressed the view that the essence of the photographic art resided in giving expression to the personality, or “way,” of an individual. While Yasui’s major works were lost during the war, some important photographs have survived, including “Secessionist Building and Its Surrounds” (1922), “Mizu” 水 (Water) (1931–32), “Koen” 公園 (Park) (1936), “Sei” 生 (Life) (1938), and examples from the “Wandering Jews” series such as “Mado” 窓 (Window) (1941, all Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art). In addition, the series commonly referred to as “Chōsen Shūraku” 朝鮮集落 (Korean Enclave) and “Yamane Kyokubadan” 山根曲馬団 (Yamane Circus Troop) have since attained masterpiece status (it is not known when they appeared in his lifetime). A total of more than 400 vintage prints were donated by the artist’s family to the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, along with other important materials, including negatives, photo albums, manuscripts and letters, plus the contents of his library. The library collection included issues of the French magazines Cahiers d’Art and Minotaure, used by Yasui to keep up to date on international art and photographic trends, and foreign photography yearbooks, etc. Outside the Hyogo museum’s collection, the only vintage prints by Yasui known to exist are three held by the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum and a few now in private hands. Posthumous prints of his works have been generated on multiple occasions, and these are valuable both from the viewpoint of the history of Yasui’s reception and as substitutes for the lost originals. They can be broadly divided into three groups: prints created from the 1950s to the 1970s by the photographers Tanahashi Shisui, Kōno Tetsu, and Kawasaki Kametarō, and others; those made in the 1980s by the photography critic Fukushima Tatsuo and his wife Miyako; and those generated more recently by the printer Hidai Kazuyoshi for special events or publications, which have included: “Nakaji YASUI 1903–1942: The Photography,” a large-scale retrospective held at the Shoto Museum of Art, Tokyo, October 5–November 21, 2004 (and other venues through to 2005); “Nakaji Yasui Portfolio”, a collection of 30 works published in 2010 by the Taka Ishii Gallery (Tokyo); and the retrospective commemorating the artist’s 120th anniversary, “Yasui Nakaji 1903–1942: Photographs” (Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, October 6–November 27, 2023, and other venues). (Kobayashi Tadashi / Translated by Ota So and Walter Hamilton) (Published online: 2025-01-20) Note 1.“Shintaisei kokumin kōza, dai 10 shū: geijutsu” (Lecture Series for the People under the New Order), vol. 10, “Art,” Asahi Shimbun, 1942.