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Hiroh Kikai

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File:Kikai persona1.jpg
Persona, the 2003 collection of Asakusa portraits that won wide recognition for Kikai’s work

Hiroh Kikai (鬼海弘雄, Kikai Hiroo, born March 18, 1945) is a Japanese photographer best known for his monochrome portraits of people in the Asakusa area of Tokyo, a project he has pursued for over thirty years.

Early years

Kikai was born in the village of Daigo (now part of Sagae, Yamagata Prefecture) on March 18, 1945 as the seventh and last child (and fifth son) of the family.[1] He had a happy childhood, from the age of 11 or so preferring to play by himself in the nature that surrounded the village.[2] He graduated from high school in 1963 and worked in Yamagata for a year, and then went to Hosei University in Tokyo to study philosophy. As a student he was keen on the cinema — he particularly enjoyed the films of Andrzej Wajda, who would later write essays for some of his books, and Satyajit Ray — and has said that he would have worked in film production if it did not require writing, a task he has never enjoyed, and money, which he lacked.[3]

Immediately after his graduation in 1968, Kikai worked as a truck driver.[4] A year later he worked in a shipyard. Meanwhile he stayed in touch with his philosophy professor from his university days, Sadayoshi Fukuda. Fukuda’s wide interests extended to writing a regular column for the magazine Camera Mainichi; he introduced Kikai to its editor, Shōji Yamagishi, who showed him photographs by Diane Arbus that made a great impact.[5] Kikai started to take photographs in 1969. At that time (when a university graduate could expect to earn ¥40,000 per month), a Hasselblad SLR camera normally cost ¥600,000; Kikai heard of an opportunity to buy one for ¥320,000 and mentioned this to Fukuda, who immediately lent him the money, with no interest, no date for return, and no pressure. (The loan was eventually repaid.) This Hasselblad 500CM, with its 80mm lens, is what Kikai has used for his portraits ever since.[6]

Photographic career

Kikai thought that work on a boat might be photogenic, but, having no experience, could not get a job. He eventually got one on a boat fishing for tuna by having an unneeded appendectomy and displaying the scar as a guarantee of one reason why he would not force the boat into port.[7] He worked on the boat in the Pacific from 6 April until 9 November 1972, with a stop in Manzanillo (Mexico) for provisions. It was during this time that he took his first photographs to be published, in the May 1973 issue of Camera Mainichi.[8] But Kikai decided that in order to be a photographer he needed darkroom skills, and he returned to Tokyo to work at Doi Technical Photo (1973–6).[9] In 1973 he won a prize for his submission to the 14th exhibition of the Japan Advertising Photographers’ Association.[10] He became a freelance photographer in 1984, a year after his first solo exhibition and the same year as his second.[11]

Living close to Asakusa (Tokyo), Kikai often went there on his days off, taking photographs of visitors. He stepped up his visits in 1985; three collections of his portraits have been published so far.

Kikai’s other long-term photographic projects are of working and residential neighborhoods in and near Tokyo, and of people and scenes in India and Turkey. All these are black and white. However, his occasional diversions have included color photographs of the Gotō islands and even of nudes.[12]

Unusually in Japan, where photographers tend to join or form groups, Kikai has never been in any group, preferring to work by himself.[13] When not setting out to take photographs, Kikai does not carry a camera with him. He leaves photographing his own family to his wife Noriko, and it is she who has the camera if they go on a trip together.[14]

In the early part of his career, Kikai often had to earn money in other ways: in 1980 he briefly worked at an Isuzu plant, in 1982 in a Subaru plant.[15]

Kikai taught for some time at Musashino Art University, but he was disappointed by the students’ lack of sustained effort and therefore quit.[16]

Kikai has had solo exhibitions in Tokyo and elsewhere in Japan, Kraków, and San Francisco; his prints are held by the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography and the Center for Creative Photography (University of Arizona, Tucson).[17]

Asakusa portraits

File:Kikai-outati.jpg
Ecce Homo (Ōtachi no shōzō), Kikai’s first collection of Asakusa portraits (1987), and his first book.

Kikai had started his Asakusa series of square, monochrome portraits as early as 1973, but after this there was a hiatus until 1985, when he realized that an ideal backdrop would be the plain red walls of Sensō-ji. At that time, the great majority of his Asakusa portraits adopted further constraints: the single subject stands directly in front of the camera (originally a Minolta Autocord TLR, later the Hasselblad), looking directly at it, and is shown from around the knees upwards.[18] Kikai may wait at the temple for four or five hours, hoping to see somebody he wants to photograph, and three or four days may pass without a single photograph; but he may photograph three people in a single day, and he has photographed over six hundred people in this way.[19] He believes that to have a plain backdrop and a direct confrontation with the subject allows the viewer to see the subject as a whole, and as somebody on whom time is marked, without any distracting or limiting specificity.[20]

Though Kikai started to photograph in Asakusa simply because it was near where he then lived, he has continued because of the nature of the place and its visitors. Once a bustling and fashionable area, Asakusa long ago lost this status. If it were as popular and crowded as it was before the war, Kikai says, he would go somewhere else.[21]

Published in 1987, Ecce Homo was the first collection of these portraits. It is a large-format book with portraits made in Asakusa in 1985–6. Kikai won the 1988 Newcomer’s Award of the Photographic Society of Japan (PSJ) and the third Ina Nobuo Award for this book.[22]

In 1995, a number of portraits from the series were shown together with the works of eleven other photographers in “Tokyo/City of Photos”, the opening exhibition of the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography.[23]

Ya-Chimata, published a year later, is a second collection, with a greater number of portraits printed on smaller pages.

Persona (2003) is a further collection of portraits made in Asakusa. A few are from Kikai’s earliest work, but most postdate anything in the earlier books. Several of the subjects appear twice or more often, so the reader sees the effect of time. The 33×31cm book format is unusually large for a photograph collection in Japan, and the plates were printed via quadtone.[24] The book won the 23rd Domon Ken Award (presented by the Mainichi Newspapers) and 2004 Annual Award of the PSJ.[25] A smaller-format edition with additional photographs followed two years later.

Portraits of spaces

File:Kikai-meiro.jpg
Tokyo Labyrinth, a 1999 collection of “portraits of spaces”.

Kikai has said that people and scenery are two sides of the same coin.[26] When tired of waiting (or of photographing) in Asakusa, he walks as far as 20 km looking for urban scenes of interest where he can make “portraits of spaces”.[27] He generally photographs between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., and avoids photographing when people are present as their presence would transform the photographs into mere snapshots, easily understood; even without people, they are the images or reflections of life.[28] Samples from this series have appeared in various magazines from at least as early as 1976.[29] Each photograph is simply captioned with the approximate address (in Japanese script) and year.

Tokyo Labyrinth (1999) presents portraits of unpeopled spaces in Tokyo (and occasionally the adjacent town of Kawasaki). There are individual shopfronts, rows of shops, residential streets, and so forth. Most of the buildings are unpretentious. Like the Asakusa series, these portraits are monochrome and square, taken via a standard lens on 120 film.[30]

Labyrinthos (2007) — based on an essay/photograph series that ran in the monthly Sōshi (『草思』) from March 2004 to July 2005 and then in the web series “Tokyo Polka”[31] — presents more of the same. Between a single nude in a shopfront display from 1978 and a very young boy photographed in December 2006, the latter appearing to share the Sensō-ji backdrop of Persona, are square monochrome views of Tokyo and Kawasaki, compositions that seem casual and rather disorderly, mostly of unpeopled scenes showing signs of intensive and recent use. The book also has the original series of essays by Kikai, essays that dwell on the inhabitants of Tokyo as observed during walks or on the train.

India

File:Kikai-india.jpg
India (1992), the largest of Kikai’s collections of his Indian work.

Kikai has said that going to India feels like a return to the Yamagata of his youth, and a release from life in Tokyo.[32] His photography there is much less planned or formal than his portraits of people or places in Tokyo: after an early start with color 120 film, he uses black and white 35mm film in India — and has laughingly said that he would use 35mm in Tokyo if the city were more interesting and didn’t make him feel unhappy.[33]

India, a large-format book published in 1992, presents photographs taken in India (and to a much lesser extent Bangladesh) over a period totalling rather more than a year and ranging from 1982 to 1990. It won Kikai the 1993 Society of Photography Award.[34]

Indo ya Gassan (“India and Gassan”, 1999) is a collection of essays about and photographs of India. Gassan is a mountain in central Yamagata Prefecture close to where Kikai was brought up; in his essays, Kikai muses on India and compares it with the Yamagata of his youth.

Shanti (2001) is a collection of photographs that concentrates on children, most of which were taken in Allahabad, Benares, Calcutta, Puri and Delhi in 2000.[35] It won the Grand Prix of the second Photo City Sagamihara Festival.[17]

Malta, Portugal and Turkey

Kikai was one of thirteen Japanese photographers invited by EU-Japan Fest to photograph the twenty-six nations of the European Union; he spent twenty-one days in Malta in September 2005 and a short period in Portugal in October 2004, travelling widely in both countries.[36] In color, these photographs are a departure from his earlier work. Most are more or less candid photographs of people. A collection was published as the eighth in a series of fourteen volumes, In-between.

Kikai has visited Turkey several times; photographs of Turkey have appeared in the magazine Asahi Camera.[37]

Notes

  1. ^ Place of birth, siblings: Kōtarō Iizawa, “Kikai Hiroo”, in Japanīzu fotogurafāzu: 14nin no shashinka-tachi no ‘ima’ / Japanese photographers (Tokyo: Hakusuisha, 2005), p. 131. Date of birth: Shōmeidō Gallery, “Domon-Ken-shō jushō kinen Kikai Hiroo shashinten ‘Persona’”.
  2. ^ Noriyuki Kanda, “Gendai no shōzō: Shashinka Kikai Hiroo: Jinsei no fuhen o toru to iu otoko”, Aera, 25 April 2005, p. 61.
  3. ^ Film tastes: Iizawa, p. 132. Film as a career: Kanda, p. 63.
  4. ^ Both the compact edition of Persona (first impression, 2005, n.p.) and Labyrinthos (first impression, 2007, n.p.) say 1978, obviously a typo or mistake and then inherited misinformation. Various apparently authoritative sources have Kikai graduating in 1969: India (n.p.), Ya-chimata (n.p.), etc. In-between 8 says 1968. Kikai says that 1968 is correct (conversation, 3 March 2006).
  5. ^ Iizawa, pp. 132–3; Kanda, p. 62.
  6. ^ Purchase and use of the Hasselblad: “Watashi kyō kinō ashita 24: Kikai Hiroo san”, Croissant no. 640, 10 July 2004, p. 98.
  7. ^ Kanda, p. 62.
  8. ^ Iizawa, p. 133; Kikai, “Seamen’s Registered Number: Misaki 16000”, Camera Mainichi, May 1973, pp. 95–101.
  9. ^ Iizawa, p. 134.
  10. ^ Sumiyo Mitsuhashi, “Kikai Hiroo”, Nihon shashinka jiten / 328 Outstanding Japanese Photographers (Kyoto: Tankōsha, 2000), p. 98.
  11. ^ The 1983 exhibition, held at the Konica Photo Gallery, Tokyo, was Nagi (凪, “Calm”); the 1984 exhibition, held at the Doi Photo Plaza, was Indo Kikō (インド紀行, “India travelogue”). Mitsuhashi, “Kikai Hiroo”.
  12. ^ Gotō islands: “Nihon o arukō (19): Kikai Hiroo to aruku (Nagasaki): Gotō rettō”, Japan Photo Contest Monthly, July 2006, pp. 4, 6, 8–16. Nudes: “On clear day”, Asahi Camera, July 2005, pp. 47–52.
  13. ^ Kanda, p. 61
  14. ^ Kanda, p. 63.
  15. ^ Ecce Homo, n.p.
  16. ^ Name of the university: Shōmeidō Gallery (which says that he started there in 1994). Dissatisfaction: “Watashi”, p. 101.
  17. ^ a b Shōmeidō Gallery.
  18. ^ Backdrop and constraints: Iizawa, pp. 134–5. Autocord and Hasselblad: Iizawa, p. 134.
  19. ^ Time spent waiting, number photographed: “Watashi”, p. 98. Days with no photos, three people in a day: “Watakushi no naka no ‘Persona’”, Tokyojin, November 2003, pp. 152–3.
  20. ^ “Watashi”, p. 99; “Watakushi no naka”, p. 149.
  21. ^ “Watakushi no naka”, p. 150.
  22. ^ PSJ award: PSJ, “Kako no jushōsha ichiran”. Ina Nobuo Award: Nikon, Announcement of 13th Ina Nobuo award, 1988.
  23. ^ See Tokyo/City of Photos, the published catalogue of the exhibition.
  24. ^ Kanda, p. 60.
  25. ^ Domon Ken Award: “Domon Ken–shō no rekishi to zen-jushō-shashinka”. PSJ award: PSJ, “2004-nen Nihon Shashin Kyōkai-shō jushōsha”.
  26. ^ “Watashi”, p. 99.
  27. ^ “Watashi”, p. 98. “Portraits of spaces” (「空間のポートレイト」, kūkan no pōtoreito): Afterword to Tokyo Labyrinth.
  28. ^ Time: “Tōkyō Meiro o megutte”, Tokyojin, February 2000, p. 110. Peopling, snapshots, image/reflection of life (“seikatsu no kage”, 「生活の影」): “Tōkyō Meiro o megutte”, p. 109.
  29. ^ See for example “Nagi”, Camera Mainichi, June 1976, pp. 119–25.
  30. ^ Standard lens: Afterword to Tokyo Labyrinth.
  31. ^ Sōshi is produced by Sōshisha, the publisher of Labyrinthos. Some photographs within the book had also appeared elsewhere, e.g. issue 2 (October 2004) of Tamaya (『たまや』).
  32. ^ “Tōkyō Meiro o megutte”, pp. 114, 115.
  33. ^ Color photographs of India: “Indo: Higan to shigan”, Camera Mainichi, November 1981, pp. 24–9; Kikai mentions use of a Minolta Autocord and a Rolleiflex. On Tokyo: “Tōkyō Meiro o megutte”, p. 115.
  34. ^ Society of Photography.
  35. ^ Shanti, afterword (n.p.).
  36. ^ Length of stay in Malta: In-between 8. Month and year: “Porutogaru kikō”, Nippon Camera, December 2005, p. 16.
  37. ^ As installments of “Anatoria kikō”. Asahi Camera; June 2001, pp. 55–61; January 2003, pp. 72–9; March 2006, pp. 68–75.

Bibliography

Books by Kikai

  • Ōtachi no shōzō: Sensō-ji keidai (『王たちの肖像：浅草寺境内』) / Ecce homo: Portraits of kings. Yokohama: Yatate, 1987. Photograph collection, with captions in Japanese and English, and an essay by Sadayoshi Fukuda. There are forty-one monochrome plates of 23×23 cm.
  • India. Tokyo: Misuzu, 1992. ISBN 4-622-04385-8. Photograph collection, with text (by Kikai and Munesuke Mita) in Japanese and English, and captions in English. There are 106 monochrome plates of 17×26 cm (all are “landscape” format).
  • Ya-Chimata: Ōtachi no kairō (『や・ちまた：王たちの回廊』, “Ya-Chimata: In the gallery of kings”). Tokyo: Misuzu, 1996. ISBN 4-622-04409-9. Photograph collection, with text (by Kikai and ten other writers) in Japanese only. There are 182 monochrome plates of 12×12 cm, and one additional plate.
  • Tōkyō meiro (『東京迷路』) / Tokyo Labyrinth. Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1999. ISBN 4-09-681241-2. Photograph collection, with text (by Andrzej Wajda, Genpei Akasegawa, and Suehiro Tanemura) in Japanese only. There are 108 monochrome plates of 18×18 cm.
  • Indo ya Gassan (『印度や月山』, “India and Gassan”). Tokyo: Hakusuisha, 1999. ISBN 4-560-04928-9. Thirty essays and forty-one photographs; text in Japanese only. The monochrome photographs are a mixture of 15×22 cm (“landscape”, across two pages) and 15×10 cm (“portrait”).
  • Shiawase: Indo daichi no kodomo-tachi (『しあわせ：インド大地の子どもたち』) / Shanti: Children of India. Tokyo: Fukuinkan, 2001. ISBN 4-8340-1779-6. Photograph collection (all monochrome): thirteen “landscape” photographs of 27×42 cm, across both pages; and ninety-four “portrait” of 16×24 cm. There are no captions, and the text is in Japanese only.
  • Persona. Tokyo: Sōshisha, 2003. ISBN 4-7942-1240-2. Photograph collection, with captions and text (by Andrzej Wajda, Suehiro Tanemura, and Kikai) in both Japanese and English. Between an additional plate at the front and back, there are twelve plates of 22×22 cm in a prefatory section (photographs taken well before the others), and in the body of the book twenty-eight plates of 11×11 cm (four to a page) and 138 plates of 22×22 cm.
  • Perusona (『ぺるそな』) / Persona. Tokyo: Sōshisha, 2005. ISBN 4-7942-1450-2. Second, popular edition of the 2003 Persona in a smaller format. There are additional essays and photographs by Kikai; captions in both Japanese and English, other text in Japanese only. The twelve prefatory plates of the first edition and 191 plates of the main series are 12×12 cm; there are also three more plates of photographs outside the series.
  • In-between 8: Kikai Hiroo Porutogaru, Maruta (『In-between 8 鬼海弘雄 ポルトガル、マルタ』) / In-between, 8: Hiroh Kikai, Portugal, Malta. Tokyo: EU-Japan Fest Japan Committee, 2005. ISBN 4-903152-07-3. Photograph collection; captions and text in both Japanese and English. There are twenty-eight photographs of Portugal and twenty-seven of Malta, all of around 12×18 cm.
  • Tōkyō mutan (『東京夢譚』) / Labyrinthos. Tokyo: Sōshisha, 2007. ISBN 4-7942-1572-X. Collection of photographs and essays; captions (for each, the approximate address and the year) and essays in Japanese only. The 118 plates are of 16×16 cm.

Other works with contributions by Kikai

  • In-between: 13nin no shashinka 25kakoku (『In-between 13人の写真家 25ヶ国』) / In-between: 13 photographers, 25 nations. Tokyo: EU-Japan Fest Japan Committee, 2005. ISBN 4-903152-13-8. Kikai is one of the thirteen in this supplementary collection of photographs in six themes (“Stones and walls”, “Words”, etc.); captions and text in both Japanese and English.
  • Literatura na świecie (Warsaw, ISSN 0324-8305) number 1–3, 2002. This special issue on Japanese literature, Japonia, is illustrated with photographs by Kikai, taken from Ya-Chimata and Tokyo Labyrinth. Text in Polish.
  • Shashin toshi Tōkyō (『写真都市Tokyo』) / Tokyo/City of Photos. Tokyo: Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, 1995. Catalogue of an exhibition held in 1995. Plates 113–29, admirably printed, are from Kikai’s series of Asakusa portraits. (Other photographers whose work appears are Takanobu Hayashi, Ryūji Miyamoto, Daidō Moriyama, Shigeichi Nagano, Ikkō Narahara, Mitsugu Ōnishi, Masato Seto, Issei Suda, Akihide Tamura, Tokuko Ushioda, and Hiroshi Yamazaki.) Captions and texts in both Japanese and English.
  • Miyako Harumi (都はるみ). Messēji (『メッセージ』) / The Message. Tokyo: Juritsusha, 2006. ISBN 4-901769-41-3. A book of which about half consists of quotations from interviews with the enka singer Harumi Miyako, and the other half of color photographs by Kikai. The photographs are not described or identified; a handful are of Miyako but most are of sea and provincial views. (In many, the scenes are recognizably of the Kumano area just west of Kumanogawa, Wakayama.) The text is all in Japanese.
  • Ueda Makoto (植田実). Shūgō jūtaku monogatari (『集合住宅物語』, “The story of collective housing”). Tokyo: Misuzu, 2004. ISBN 4-622-07086-3. A book about collective housing in Japan from the Dōjunkai buildings onward, with 165 illustrative color photographs, all by Kikai. (Some monochrome photographs are older and are by other photographers.) The text, by Ueda, is in Japanese only. Previously (1997–2001) published in Tokyojin.
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