Talk:Shōmei Tōmatsu

Transition in Okinawa

I think more can be said about the transition that took place in Okinawa, particularly in regards to the ideology that Okinawa served as almost a storehouse for pre-modern Japan (i.e. that Okinawa was somehow more representative of a true, ancient Japanese identity) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alesca20 (talk • contribs) 01:55, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Feel free to add it. -- Hoary (talk) 13:00, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Exhibitions

This section is just a start and could really use fine tuning. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alesca20 (talk • contribs) 07:00, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Certainly it needs referencing. -- Hoary (talk) 13:00, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

INTERFACE 1980s & 1990s

The late career section could use mention of Interface (which includes images from Plastics). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alesca20 (talk • contribs) 02:40, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Feel free to add it. -- Hoary (talk) 13:00, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Removed List Tag

The heart of the article is written in prose. The exhibitions, awards, and publications are written as a list towards the end of the article, which is common practice for many artists, particularly Japanese photographers. Furthermore, many of the publications and exhibitions are referenced within the biography sections so it doesn't make sense to restructure them once again into prose. However, I do think that the publications section could be reformatted for readability and shortened. Alesca20 (talk) 10:55, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

How/why could "the publications section be [beneficially] reformatted for readability and shortened"? -- Hoary (talk) 13:00, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Iwanami Shashin Bunko

Iwanami Shashin Bunko 岩波写真文庫 was a large series of booklets published by Iwanami in the 50s. Iwanami probably named it so because bunko (literally something like "library" in the sense of collection of books") was a well-established term for a series of books of small, uniform format (see the feeble stub bunkobon). "Library" has been used similarly by publishers of English books (cf "Everyman's Library", but nowhere near as widely as bunko has for Japanese book(let)s. Many Japanese-language books have their series names written in (kind-of-) English as well as (or instead of) Japanese; however, booklets in this series are only marked 岩波写真文庫. Thinking that "Iwanami Photography Library" was misleading, in this pair of edits I changed it to "Iwanami Shashin Bunko".

Incidentally, Iwanami Shashin Bunko had at least one imitator. Kadokawa Shashin Bunko 角川写真文庫 published a book with Takeji Iwamiya's photographs of Sado. However, I've seldom encountered any of the booklets in this series, and don't remember encountering any similar booklet in any other. -- Hoary (talk) 23:50, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

1968 exhibition

The 1968 exhibition (which ran for just two weeks, at Ikebukuro) was "curated", as we'd now say, by more than three people. I'd be surprised if Tōmatsu, Nakahira and Taki were all involved, but it's possible. I'm pretty sure that Naitō was one of the curators. However, I don't have a source for this at hand. The two sources I've added say nothing about who curated it. -- Hoary (talk) 00:24, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

Tomatsu talks about the exhibition's editing team including those Nakahira and Taki here. Also I was also working off of SF MOMA's information here. Alesca20 (talk) 22:56, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

Yes, you're right. -- Hoary (talk) 01:40, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

English titles (or not) of books

Uh, I see what has happened.

According to this version (March 2009):

• Ō! Shinjuku (おお!新宿, Oh! Shinjuku). Tokyo: Shaken, 1969.
• Okinawa Okinawa Okinawa (Okinawa沖縄Okinawa). Tokyo: Shaken, 1969.
• Sengoha (戦後派). Tokyo: Chūōkōronsha, 1971. Tokyo: Gurabia Seikōsha, 1971.
• Tōmatsu Shōmei shashinshū (東松照明写真集) / I Am a King. Tokyo: Shashinhyōronsha, 1972.
• Akemodoro no hana (朱もどろの華). Tokyo: Sanseidō, 1976.
• Doro no Ōkoku (泥の王国) / Kingdom of Mud. Sonorama Shashin Sensho 12. Tokyo: Asahi Sonorama, 1978. With a summary in English in addition to the Japanese text. A reworking of the material published earlier in Sarāmu areikomu.
• (in Japanese) Hikaru kaze (光る風：沖縄) / Sparkling Winds: Okinawa. Nihon no Bi. Tokyo: Shūeisha, 1979. A large-format (37cm high) book of color photographs of Okinawa. An supplementary colophon gives publication details in English (including the only mention of the English title), but all the explanations and other texts are in Japanese only.

According to the current version:

• Ō! Shinjuku (おお!新宿, Oh! Shinjuku). Tokyo: Shaken, 1969.
• Okinawa Okinawa Okinawa (Okinawa沖縄Okinawa). Tokyo: Shaken, 1969.
• Sengoha (戦後派). Tokyo: Chūōkōronsha, 1971. Tokyo: Gurabia Seikōsha, 1971.
• I Am a King. Tokyo: Shashinhyōronsha, 1972.
• Taiyō no empitsu (新編 太陽の鉛筆, Pencil of the Sun). Tokyo: Mainichi, 1975.
• Akemodoro no hana (朱もどろの華, Scarlet Dappled Flower). Tokyo: Sanseidō, 1976.
• Doro no Ōkoku (泥の王国, Kingdom of Mud). Sonorama Shashin Sensho 12. Tokyo: Asahi Sonorama, 1978. Text in English and Japanese. A reworking of the material published earlier in Sarāmu areikomu.
• Hikaru kaze (光る風：沖縄, Sparkling Winds: Okinawa). Nihon no Bi. Tokyo: Shūeisha, 1979. Text in Japanese. A large-format (37 cm high) book of color photographs of Okinawa. A supplementary colophon gives publication details in English (including the only mention of the English title), but all the explanations and other texts are in Japanese only.

Note the contrast in the 2009 version between

• Ō! Shinjuku (おお!新宿, Oh! Shinjuku). Tokyo: Shaken, 1969.

(with a nonce translation of the title) on the one hand and

• Tōmatsu Shōmei shashinshū (東松照明写真集) / I Am a King. Tokyo: Shashinhyōronsha, 1972.
• Doro no Ōkoku (泥の王国) / Kingdom of Mud. Sonorama Shashin Sensho 12. Tokyo: Asahi Sonorama, 1978. With a summary in English in addition to the Japanese text. A reworking of the material published earlier in Sarāmu areikomu.
• (in Japanese) Hikaru kaze (光る風：沖縄) / Sparkling Winds: Okinawa. Nihon no Bi. Tokyo: Shūeisha, 1979.

(with actual alternative titles, as appearing on/in the books themselves) on the other.

Now try this non-contrast:

• Ō! Shinjuku (おお!新宿, Oh! Shinjuku). Tokyo: Shaken, 1969.
• I Am a King. Tokyo: Shashinhyōronsha, 1972.
• Doro no Ōkoku (泥の王国, Kingdom of Mud). Sonorama Shashin Sensho 12. Tokyo: Asahi Sonorama, 1978. Text in English and Japanese. A reworking of the material published earlier in Sarāmu areikomu.
• Hikaru kaze (光る風：沖縄, Sparkling Winds: Okinawa). Nihon no Bi. Tokyo: Shūeisha, 1979.

The earlier version is unsatisfactory, if only because "not seen" (in an SGML comment) is an obscure way to say "one editor, Hoary, hasn't yet checked the book but hopes to do so". (Especially because said editor was too preoccupied to return and complete the job.) But it seems good to distinguish between (A) an alternative title that appears on/in the book and (B) some English translation that somebody somewhere thought might be helpful. (I've done it elsewhere -- e.g. Hiro Kikai -- and nobody seems to have changed it, objected to it, or asked about it. Though come to think of it, it's clear that I should make several improvements.) For one thing, a good library catalogue should be searchable for any actual title; it won't be searchable for some English version that Rubinfien, an anonymous Wikipedia editor, or somebody else just happened to think was a good idea at the time.

So yes, restore the distinction between verified alternative titles on the one hand and unverified ones or nonce translations on the other. -- Hoary (talk) 02:05, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

I agree that a distinction should be made between verified and non-verified titles. The list was reformatted with priority given to legibility. Given the length of the list, with the added length of the romanji reading and descriptions of certain books, (in my opinion) it is quite difficult to read. I wondered if maybe romanji readings could even be deleted in favor of the title in it's original language and then possibly followed by either a verified translation or unverified translation that is clearly marked.

Also is it being suggested that verified titles be written with a backslash and italicized text, while non-verified titles be put in parentheses?

Alesca20 (talk) 23:13, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

On the notion of deleting rōmaji versions (romanizations) of Japanese titles: I assume that there are people who'd like to know the pronunciation of a title that's in kanji. This can be helpful. For example, in a Japanese library one has to input a Japanese title in the standard way -- you can't additionally use the same computer to browse Wikipedia (etc) and therefore can't copy kanji from there and paste this into the OPAC. Ability to input the Japanese title is important even for books that have an alternative title in English (or some other western language), as there's no guarantee that the particular OPAC will bother with such alternative titles (which can be well hidden at the one extreme, or can look like mere packaging gimmickry at the other). And so I'm sure that the romanizations should stay.

That said, I'm not happy with the order. Rather than romanized Japanese first and original Japanese script following in parentheses, I think the order should be original Japanese script first and romanized Japanese following in parentheses.

On "a verified translation or unverified translation that is clearly marked": Are you suggesting something like the following three-way distinction?

• Suigai to nihonjin (水害と日本人. (Title means "Floods and the Japanese". Neither this nor any title in any second language appears on the booklet.) [...]
• Akemodoro no hana (朱もどろの華). (Title means "Scarlet dappled flower". Whether this or an alternative appears on the book remains to be checked.) [...]
• Nihon rettō kuronikuru: Tōmatsu no 50-nen (日本列島クロンクル：東末の50年) = Traces: 50 years of Tomatsu's works. (Book has both these two titles.) [...]

This would be clear, but I think it would be more laborious. (OTOH it could surely be improved.)

There are no backslashes (\). Regular slashes (/) have been used to equate main and alternative titles. In conventional bibliographic use, equals signs are used instead; I now think that what in this article have been slashes should instead be equals signs.

Yes, it seems helpful to me to distinguish between (A) actual titles in italics and (B) guessed or nonce titles not in italics. -- Hoary (talk) 01:38, 22 February 2021 (UTC)