was a renowned

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

ese portrait and

commercial photographer Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employed ...

. Born in

Fukui Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region of Honshū. Fukui Prefecture has a population of 778,943 (1 June 2017) and has a geographic area of 4,190 km2 (1,617 sq mi). Fukui Prefecture borders Ishikawa Prefecture to the north, ...

in 1878, Fukui went some time around 1897 to

Sapporo ( ain, サッ・ポロ・ペッ, Satporopet, lit=Dry, Great River) is a city in Japan. It is the largest city north of Tokyo and the largest city on Hokkaido, the northernmost main island of the country. It ranks as the fifth most populous city ...

, where he studied

photography Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is emplo ...

under Tokiwa Mishima in Mishima's studio. Around 1907, he moved to Tokyo, where he studied under Kazumasa Ogawa. Morikawa ended up with his own studio, Morikawa Shashinkan (, which became renowned as outstanding in Tokyo and the premier studio in Japan for ''

omiai , or as it is properly known in Japan with the honorific prefix , is a Japanese traditional custom which relates closely to Western matchmaking, in which a woman and a man are introduced to each other to consider the possibility of marriage. T ...

'' photography. Morikawa died in Tokyo on 5 February 1949. Some of Morikawa's work is in the permanent collection of the

Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography The is an art museum concentrating on photography. As the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, it was founded by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, and is in Meguro-ku, a short walk from Ebisu station in southwest Tokyo. The museum al ...

.So denoted by the inclusion of Morikawa in the book ''328 Outstanding Japanese Photographers''.

Notes

Japanese photographers Portrait photographers Artists from Fukui Prefecture 1878 births 1949 deaths Commercial photographers {{Japan-photographer-stub