‘Little works of art’: photography, camera clubs and democratizing everyday life in early twentieth-century Japan

Abstract

By the end of the Meiji period in 1912, members of Japan's new middle classes had taken up the pastime of photography, once a luxury affordable only to Japan's urban elite. The availability of cheaper, domestically produced cameras and developing materials fueled this popularization of photography. Along with affordable products, the rapid growth in popular camera clubs helped spread photographic know-how. Camera clubs were shared social spaces where members, primarily men, explored photographic art and technique. By spreading the idioms and practices of artistic expression among a wider audience, camera clubs, along with museums, galleries and exhibitions, were the primary institutional setting for the democratization of the fine arts in modern Japan. At the same time, clubs were voluntary associations and operated along democratic procedural principles that provided members the opportunity to participate in democratically run organizations where they could exercise individual rights not granted to most of them in the wider political system. This article argues that camera clubs must be understood as among the most important spaces for the expression of liberal democratic ideals in the cultural sphere during the period of imperial democracy from 1905 until 1932.