was a

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

amateur

photographer A photographer (the Greek language, Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who makes photographs. Duties and types of photographe ...

particularly noted for his photography of

Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of 2. ...

and his use of color. Tanaka was born in

Ise Ise may refer to: Places * Ise, Mie, a city in Japan **Ise Grand Shrine, a Shinto shrine located in Ise, Mie * Ise Ekiti, a city in Nigeria *Ise, Norway, a village in Norway *Ise Province, an ancient province of Japan * River Ise, a tributary of th ...

, Mie (Japan) in 1901.Although ''Shashinka wa nani o hyōgen shita ka'' specifies 4 December 1901, the editors of the two later biographical dictionaries would have known of this book (the article in ''Nihon no shashinka'' explicitly cites it) but the works omit the date for some reason. From 1932 onwards he participated in a variety of amateur photography groups. From 1948 he worked in the Osaka office of ''

Asahi Shinbun is one of the four largest newspapers in Japan. Founded in 1879, it is also one of the oldest newspapers in Japan and Asia, and is considered a newspaper of record for Japan. Its circulation, which was 4.57 million for its morning edition and ...

'''s publishing company. From 1955, Tanaka worked to photograph Kawachi in Osaka, in a series titled ''Kawachi Fūdoki'' (). In 1962 he started photographing firework displays in color (then still unusual for such purposes), with his camera attached to his moving body. Starting in the seventies, Tanaka won a series of awards for his long service to amateur photography in the

Kansai The or the , lies in the southern-central region of Japan's main island Honshu, Honshū. The region includes the Prefectures of Japan, prefectures of Nara Prefecture, Nara, Wakayama Prefecture, Wakayama, Kyoto Prefecture, Kyoto, Osaka Prefectur ...

area. He died on 7 November 1995.

Collections of works by Tanaka

*''Yume sen'ya'' (). Osaka: Village Press, 1990. *''Shamo to renkon hatake: Nihon no genfūkei Kawachi'' (). Kyoto: Kōrinsha, 1993. *''Kōseki mange'' (). Tokyo: Tanaka Kōtarō Sakuhinshū Iinkai, 1996. *''Shikisai kōkyōgaku'' ). Bee Books 239. Tokyo: Mitsumura, 1996. .

Notes

References

* ''Nihon no shashinka'' () / ''Biographic Dictionary of Japanese Photography.'' Tokyo: Nichigai Associates, 2005. . P.248. Despite the English-language alternative title, all in Japanese. * Sekiji Kazuko (). "Tanaka Kōtarō" (). ''Nihon shashinka jiten'' () / ''328 Outstanding Japanese Photographers.'' Kyoto: Tankōsha, 2000. . P.201. Despite the English-language alternative title, all in Japanese. * ''Shashinka wa nani o hyōgen shita ka: 1960–1980'' (写真家はなにを表現したか1960～1980, What were photographers expressing? 1960–1980). Tokyo: Konica Plaza, 1992. Three of Tanaka's photographs of fireworks are on p. 44; a biographical chronology appears on p. 103. Japanese photographers People from Ise, Mie 1901 births 1995 deaths Artists from Mie Prefecture {{Japan-photographer-stub