Japanese Masters: Shinzo Fukuhara

I found this remarkable description of a remarkable person and could not help but share.  Links to photo resources can be found below.  

After Shinzō Fukuhara returned to Tokyo in 1913 from the United States and Europe, where he studied pharmacology [at Colombia University] and pursued his interests in photography, he took over the day-to-day management of his family’s company, [the Tokyo pharmacy] Shiseidō, when his father retired and neither of his older brothers was found fit to run the company.

福原 信三 Fukuhara Shinzō, 1883 – 1948

Under Fukuhara’s leadership, Shiseidō became Japan’s most innovative cosmetics company. He established one of the first research labs in the industry and was among the earliest to focus on the value of design to advertising, setting up the company’s design section in 1916. He opened one of Tokyo’s most acclaimed public art galleries in the company’s headquarters in Ginza in 1919 and one of the earliest full-service beauty salons in 1922. In the world of photography, he established his own publishing company, Shashin Geijutsusha, and the highbrow photo journal Shashin geijutsu in 1921. He was also an accomplished art photographer and in 1922 published his photographs from his time as a student in Paris in Paris and the Seine. He founded the Nihon Shashin Kai (Japan Photographic Society) in 1924 and became its first president, a position he held until his death in 1948.34

Fukuhara’s role in bridging the worlds of retailing and art was a unique one and deeply informed his later work in the world of popular photography. His activities as a photographer and publisher from 1910 through the 1920s positioned Fukuhara as a leader in the exclusive circles of high-art photography. But his role as an innovative leader in retailing provided him with a keen understanding of the consumer market. With this unique combination of business acumen and creativity, along with a deep commitment to the arts, specifically geijutsu shashin, Fukuhara turned his attention to popularizing the art of photography among a broader base of consumers. More specifically, his close association with the Asahi Newspaper Company from the mid-1920s took Fukuhara from the realm of high-art photography to middlebrow popularizer of geijutsu shashin, in particular as one of the leading organizers behind the elaborate events celebrating the centenary anniversary of the invention of photography in 1925. Though he had already written a great deal on photographic aesthetics for his highbrow journal Shashin geijutsu, he greatly expanded his readership among amateurs and hobbyists with the publication of “The Way of Photography.”

Excerpt From: Ross, Kerry. Photography for Everyone: The Cultural Lives of Cameras and Consumers in Early Twentieth-Century Japan. Stanford University Press, 2015

-------------------------------------------

Paris et la Seine (1922).  Commentary in German.

-------------------------------------------

Beautiful West lake: the Light with its harmony (1931).

In 1930 Fukuhara travelled to China and photographed the long-established tourist destination of the West Lake at Hangzhou. The sub-title came from his influential 1923 essay 'The Light with its harmony' in which Fukuhara promoted a manifesto for photographic art reflecting national character (Japaneseness) based on the abstract qualities of light merged with the aesthetics of traditional arts and culture.

Plates can be viewed online at The National Gallery of Australia.

#