Toyoko Tokiwa

(1928 – 24 December 2019) was a Japanese photographer best known for her 1957 book of text and photographs ''Kiken na Adabana'' (), and particularly for its portrayal of the red-light district of post- occupation Yokohama, with US servicemen.Tomoe Moriyama (), "Tokiwa Toyoko", ''Nihon Shashinka Jiten'' () / ''328 Outstanding Japanese Photographers'' (Kyoto: Tankōsha, 2000; ), p.221. Despite the English-language alternative title, in English only.

Life and career

Toyoko Tokiwa () was born in Yokohama in 1928.As stated in an ''Asahi Shinbun'' article cited above; additionally, the ''Kanagawa Shinbun'' Kanaroko article cited above states that she was 91 at the time of her death. However, Moriyama (''Nihon shashinka jiten'') says 15 January 1930. A birth year of 1930 is widely stated, even in at least one academic paper devoted to Tokiwa (). , pp.341–342 within (Tokyo: Nichigai Associates, 2005; ), which might be expected to be authoritative, is silent about the year, let alone date, of birth. (An alternative, English-language title, ''Biographic Dictionary of Contemporary Japanese Photography'', appears within the latter book, whose content is in Japanese only.) (As a photographer, she would later spell "toyo" in ''hiragana'' rather than the original ''katakana''.Source for is , pp.341–342 within . Tokyo: Nichigai Associates, 2005. . In ''Nihon Shashinka Jiten'' (2000), Moriyama instead states that it was . As both books were edited under the supervision of the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, it seems likely that the newer one was compiled with knowledge of the older one and thus that it is more reliable.) Her family ran a liquor wholesaler at Kanagawa-dōri 4-chōme in Kanagawa-ku, Yokohama, where she lived until the building was burnt down in the American firebombing of 29 May 1945, an event in which her father sustained fatal burns.Interview with Tokiwa
''Nakahō Nyūsu'' () no. 5435 (March 2004), Yokohama Naka Hōjinkai. Accessed 9 January 2011.Noriko Tsutatani (), "Tokiwa Toyoko", in Kōtarō Iizawa, ed., ''Nihon no Shashinka 101'' (; Tokyo: Shinshokan, 2008; ), pp. 92–93. Her elder brother had used a Rolleicord camera and a darkroom, and this combined with a desire to work among men led Tokiwa to want to work as a photographer, even before she had used a camera herself.

Tokiwa graduated from Tokyo Kasei-Gakuin (the predecessor of Tokyo Kasei-Gakuin Junior College) in 1951. She started work as an announcer but dreamt of being a photographer instead, joining the women-only Shirayuri Camera Club (, ''Shirayuri Kamera Kurabu'');Yokohama kaikō 150-shūnen kinen: Yokohama Foto Toraianguru: Kaikō kara mirai e
(), ''Art Yokohama'' (Yokohama Civic Art Gallery), vol. 40, 1 October 2009, p.5. Accessed 9 January 2011. she was influenced by the realism of Japanese photography at the time (led by Ken Domon).

Some of Tokiwa's earliest photographs are of Ōsanbashi, the pier in Yokohama at which American ships docked and that was thus the site of emotional partings and reunions of American military families. She was able to photograph close up without attracting any comment, and greatly enjoyed the work. But she quickly moved to her main interest, working women. Despite an initial hatred of the American military, prompted in particular by her father's death, and revulsion at prostitution, she simply invited herself into the ''akasen'' (red-light area) of Yokohama, asked the girls whether she might photograph, and was accepted.

Tokiwa would later marry an amateur photographer, (, 1914–1995) – whose photography of postwar Japan appears with hers in a 1996 book – and work as both housewife and photojournalist.

She was a member of the Japan Professional Photographers Society and chaired the Kanagawa Prefectural Photographers Association (, ''Kanagawa-ken shashin-sakka kyōkai'').

''Kiken na Adabana''

In 1956 Tokiwa held an exhibition titled ''Hataraku Josei'' (, Working women) at the Konishiroku Photo Gallery (Tokyo) that won high acclaim. The exhibition showed pro wrestlers, models, ''ama,'' nurses and prostitutes.

In 1957, her book ''Kiken na Adabana'' (, literally "Dangerous toxic/fruitless flowers"),The title of this book abounds in complications. The first (a trivial one) is that it appears as (with the older form of the character for ''ken'') on the front and spine of the dust jacket and on the title page, but as (with the newer form) on the spine itself, the half title, the colophon, and the front of the '' obi.'' Secondly, the reading of the last two characters of the title is problematic. The book itself does not appear to specify the reading anywhere (even though its colophon gives the reading "Tokiwa"). Japanese dictionaries of Sino-Japanese do not include the combination ; dictionaries of Japanese such as ''Kōjien'' do not list it under any of its more obvious readings: ''dokubana, dokuhana, dokuka'' or ''dokka.'' Accounts in Japanese of this book, such as Moriyama's piece in ''Nihon Shashinka Jiten'' or ''Nihon Shashinshi Gaisetsu'' (; Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1999; ) do not give the reading. Therefore somebody who has to provide a reading for the title will normally just guess or depend on others' guesses, and ''Kiken na Dokubana'' and ''Kiken na Kokuka'' are attested in OPACs, bibliographic databases and so forth. However, the "ruby" (i.e. ''adabana'') is provided for the title in the potted chronology for Tokiwa on p.159 of ''Yokohama Saigen'' (see " Books by Tokiwa"), and it is highly unlikely that this was done without consultation with Tokiwa herself. Both Kōtarō Iizawa and Luisa Orto specify ''adabana,'' although without comment. Iizawa, "The evolution of postwar photography", in Anne Wilkes Tucker et al., ''The History of Japanese Photography'' (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003; ), p.217; Orto, "Toyoko Tokiwa", in Orto and Matsuda Takako, "Artist Profiles", in Tucker et al., p.364. The third problem is of how to gloss the title in English. Iizawa and Orto do so as "Dangerous fruitless flowers". ''Adabana'' indeed means "fruitless flower(s)", but it is normally written and does not imply toxicity. By metaphorical extension, it can mean "prostitute(s)". ''Adabana'' is sometimes written , in which the character for ''ada'' means "harm" or "malice" (in addition to "enemy", etc.). Meanwhile, the character does mean "toxicity". Thus the title means "Dangerous fruitless flowers", "Dangerous prostitutes", "Dangerous toxic flowers", or similar. was published by Mikasa Shobō. Its text is divided into three parts:

*''Kiken na adabana'' (as explained above)
*''Fāsutofurekkusu kara Kyanon made'' (i.e. "From Firstflex to Canon"; the Firstflex was a brand of twin-lens reflex camera made by Tokiwa Seiki, )
*''Kōfuku e no iriguchi no aru ie'' (i.e. "A house with an entrance to happiness")

Each of these is further subdivided into short essays. The text is in the first person and often about Tokiwa herself: the (composite) cover photograph and the photograph in the frontispiece both show Tokiwa holding a Canon rangefinder camera, in a period when photography was very much a male pursuit in Japan."Until the 1980s there were few successful female photographers n Japan" Anne Wilkes Tucker, "Introduction", Tucker et al., p.12. Tucker then mentions and alludes to several who preceded Tokiwa.

The text of the book is interrupted by four sections of photographs, taken between 1952 and 1957 (captions and technical data appear on pp. 242–241Not a mistake; as this is a two-page island of horizontal writing within a book whose text is otherwise vertical, it is paginated backwards.). There is a title on the first photograph of each; these are:

*''Aru machi no kurai onna no iru fūkei'' (i.e. "The dark scenery with women of a certain Japanese town"). Mostly street scenes within this town (Yokohama) many showing girls and US servicemen. On pp. 44–45 appears Tokiwa's most famous photograph,This is reprinted in for example Iizawa, "The evolution of postwar photography", in Tucker et al., p.236. taken in Wakaba-chō Bā-gai (, bar street), behind Isezakichō, showing a girl held down by a foreign man while another in uniform looks away.
*''Kiken na hakimono'' (i.e. "Dangerous footwear"). The opening photograph shows '' geta'' and sandals discarded at the entrance to a hospital; the photographs that follow show girls waiting for or having injections and mandatory checks of freedom from venereal diseases.
*''Fāsutofurekkusu kara Kyanon made'' (as explained above). A complex series: foreign visitors to Japan, ''ama,'' nude modelling, and '' chindon'ya.''
*''Kōfuku e no iriguchi no aru ie'' (as explained above). Happier scenes of young women – although the series ends with the scene shown within the lens on the cover.

Kōtarō Iizawa calls the book "the strongest, most compassionate work by female photographer of that era."

Television work

From 1962 to 1965 Tokiwa produced the television series ''Hataraku Josei-tachi'' (, Working women).

Other photography and publications

Tokiwa photographed around US military bases in Yokosuka (1958) and the Ryūkyū islands (1960), the Soviet Union (1974, and Taiwan and Malaysia (1975–80). Since 1985, she worked on issues involving the elderly.

No book has yet (early 2010) been devoted to the later work of Tokiwa, but from the 1950s until the 1970s her work appeared in the magazines ''Asahi Camera, Camera Mainichi, Nippon Camera, Sankei Camera,'' and ''.''

In November 2010, when she spoke (on the 23rd) to the Japan Professional Photographers Society's 60th anniversary photo exhibition "Women" in Yokohama to an audience of about a hundred on her early days as a photographer, she was living in Yokohama and working on photographing people with Alzheimer's disease.

Other work

In 1967 Tokiwa joined a committee choosing work for exhibition by Kanagawa Prefecture, and in 1987 she taught at Fujisawa Bunka Sentā (Fujisawa, Kanagawa).''Shashinka wa Nani o Mita ka: 1945–1960'' (, What did photographers see: 1945–1960; Tokyo: Konica Plaza, 1991), pp. 122–123.  OCLCbr>47616918
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Exhibitions

In 1957, Tokiwa joined Tōmatsu, Narahara and others in the first exhibition of ''Jūnin no Me'' (, The Eyes of Ten). Until 1960, Tokiwa presented her work in several exhibitions, at least once together with Hisae Imai.

The 3rd ''Month of Photography Tokyo'' showcased a variety of photograph exhibitions at various galleries in Tokyo in 1998. The main theme was "The Eye of Women Photographers" (''Josei Shashinka no Manazashi''), and it exhibited photographs by Tokiwa and other established Japanese women photographers of the 1945–1997 period.

Tokiwa joined the ''Yokohama Photo Triangle'' exhibition in 2009, held as a part of the 150th anniversary of the opening of the port of Yokohama, where she also organized a civic participation program.

Permanent collections

*Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography.As implied by her inclusion, without a qualifying note, within the book ''Nihon Shashinka Jiten'' / ''328 Outstanding Japanese Photographers.''
* Yamaguchi Prefectural Museum of Art.
* Yokohama Civic Art Gallery.List of 2003 exhibits from the gallery's collection
, Yokohama Civic Art Gallery.   Accessed 9 January 2011.

Books by Tokiwa

*''Kiken na Adabana'' (). Tokyo: Mikasa Shobō, 1957.
*With Taikō Okumura (). ''Sengo 50-nen: Yokohama Saigen: Futari de Utsushita Haisen Sutōrī'' ().Another problematic title. All three ingredients appear on the cover, the title page, and the colophon, but the question of which way around they should go is unclear. In this list, they follow the order in the colophon. Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1996. . Photographs of Yokohama after the war; pp. 3–95 show Okumura's work, pp. 96–143 show Tokiwa's.
*''Watashi no naka no Yokohama Densetsu: Tokiwa Toyoko Shashinshū 1954–1956'' () / ''A Collection of Photographs by Toyoko Tokiwa.'' Yokohama: Tokiwa Toyoko Shashin Jimusho, 2001. Photographs of Yokohama, 1954–56.

Further reading

* Iizawa Kōtarō (). ''Shashin to Kotoba: Shashinka Nijūgo-nin, Kaku Katariki'' (). Shūeisha Shinsho. Tokyo: Shūeisha, 2003. . Pages 91–97 are devoted to Tokiwa.
*Matsumoto Norihiko (). "Gun-kichi-mondai ni idomu: Saeki Yoshikatsu to Tokiwa Toyoko" (). Pp. 35–40 of ''Shōwa o Toraeta Shashinka no Me: Sengo-Shashin no Ayumi o Tadoru'' (). Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 1989. .

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tokiwa, Toyoko

1928 births
2019 deaths
Japanese photographers
Japanese essayists
People from Yokohama
Japanese women photographers
Street photographers