“THE NUMBER ONE CHINA-JAPAN CAMERA HOUSE”: CHIYO YOKO PHOTO SUPPLIES AND THE BUSINESS OF PHOTOGRAPHY IN INTERWAR SHANGHAI

Abstract

Chiyo Yoko Photo Supplies emerged as a leading specialty store catering to the highly international population of photographers in the international treaty port of Shanghai, the beating heart of art, culture, and commerce in early twentieth-century China. Drawing on Chinese, Japanese, and English-language period sources, this essay reconstructs the profile of this influential Japanese retailer, examining its committed investments in the business and culture of photography during this formative period of amateur photography in China. The store’s multifaceted retail marketing strategies, ranging from advertising in multiple languages to its backing of a photographic society and organization of a large-scale international exhibition, cultivated a cosmopolitan clientele base spanning the diverse communities of Chinese and foreign nationals in the city. This case study recaptures the transnational dynamics and cross-border movements of people and goods that empowered photography as a business, which in turn galvanized the popularization of amateur photography during this period of heightened national consciousness in modern China.