The Brooklyn Rail

Though interest in Japanese photography by Western audiences has existed for several decades—perhaps first and most clearly expressed by the 1974 exhibition New Japanese Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York—it is only somewhat recently that a significant increase in scholarship has rectified many of the most glaring historical oversights and omissions. Along these lines, I’m So Happy You Are Here: Japanese Women Photographers from the 1950s to Now provides a welcome corrective to and enlargement of the canon of Japanese photography, which has for so long and to such an extreme degree been dominated by men. The overriding emphasis of the book, in each essay, artist portfolio, and throughout the illustrated bibliography as well, is that the photographic production by women in Japan over the past seventy years does not only equal that of their male counterparts, but, more importantly and when taken in aggregate, it dramatically expands our idea of what a valid photographic subject could and can still be.

Edited by Pauline Vermare and Lesley A. Martin, I’m So Happy You Are Here begins with three essays that look at the historical situation the book addresses. Vermare’s essay has the broadest perspective as she takes stock of preceding scholarship and significant exhibitions that, in their own way, laid the groundwork for this book. She considers the limited applicability of feminist thought as a heuristic tool, before then providing an elegant and concise overview of the post-war decades, including Japan’s social, political, and economic circumstances and how these shaped the work to come. Carrie Cushman and Kelly Midori McCormick focus on a diverse group of five photographers to show how each navigated the social limitations or expectations (or both) that were placed on women in Japanese society as they innovated in their respective ways. The final essay by Takeuchi Mariko considers four more photographers who have used the medium in an expanded sense, ultimately taking their art beyond its formal boundaries.

To some extent, I’m So Happy You Are Here can be understood as the logical result of the ever-increasing attention being paid to Japanese photography that has developed over the past twenty-five or so years. The expansive MFA Houston exhibition catalogue, The History of Japanese Photography (2003), did a great deal of heavy lifting to make the contours of photographic history in Japan—from the first tremors of activity in the mid-nineteenth century up to the institutionalization of photography in the latter half of the twentieth century—accessible to a general audience. In the process of doing so it highlighted critically important work from photographers like Ishiuchi Miyako (one of the few women regularly mentioned in histories of Japanese photography), while also addressing the problem of historical estimation and academic attention having not been paid to women photographers up to that point. Setting Sun: Writings By Japanese Photographers (2005) and Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and 70s (2009) both aimed to meet the rising demand for a greater understanding of photography culture and publishing history in Japan, though again, it was only Ishiuchi who received mention in the latter publication, and in the former she was joined only by Yurie Nagashima. More recently, Lena Fritsch’s Ravens and Red Lipstick: Japanese Photography since 1945 (2018) put forward an expanded canon of sorts, one with ample space for women beyond the estimable Ishiuchi. What I’m So Happy You Are Here offers is something like a synthesis of what each of these earlier books provided both in content and scope, and in so doing it opens up countless new directions for research, appreciation, and comparison.

Where the book truly excels is in its twenty-five portfolio presentations that are each accompanied by lucid and insightful introductory texts. Though these brief windows into an artist’s work can often seem disjointed or uninspiring in lesser books of this sort, here they manage to effectively convey the essential conceptual, aesthetic, and thematic qualities of a photographer’s work, while also revealing key technical details and working methods. For instance, we learn that the soft, delicate colors and loose structure of photographs by Mikiko Hara result largely from the age of her camera and lens (dating from the 1930s and ’50s), and from her tendency to often release the shutter spontaneously in response to scenes that interest her. The ethereal magic in her pictures is no less compelling now that her technique is better known. The editing of the portfolios is equally effective at revealing the lyrical range and technical precision of these photographers. The intimacy in the work of Sakiko Nomura is made plain with a concise group of portraits that are oblique and revealing in equal measure, and which take on a universal tone when sequenced with atmospheric cityscapes. Their combination, and the moving effect it generates, allow us to easily and evocatively imagine greater depths to Nomura’s work.

Were the book to conclude with the portfolios it would mark a significant achievement. It goes further, however, by including a richly detailed illustrated bibliography (compiled by Marc Feustel and Russet Lederman) that underscores the depth and quality of photobook production by Japanese women photographers. This is an important contribution, as the photobook in Japan has long occupied a privileged position, while often serving as the most likely source of familiarity that foreign audiences might have with Japanese photography. The book concludes with a selection of texts for additional reading, the majority of which have been translated into English for the first time (many are also excerpted from longer essays and interviews from as early as 1993). If the introductory essays cut a broad outline, and necessarily so, these additional texts provide granularity around, for example, the establishment of women’s camera clubs, or an assessment of Japanese photography and its changes written from the vantage point of the year 2003, which itself might allow us to discern further changes from then to now. The possibilities for future study and knowledge production can seem boundless after having worked through the group of these readings. What I’m So Happy You Are Here argues more convincingly than at its beginning is that while the history of Japanese photography may have been meaningfully amended over recent years, we are nonetheless still at the beginning of something.