Photography Collection

A GHQ photographer provides a lens on post-World War II Japan in two recently published volumes of photographs edited by Yoneyuki Sugita, associate professor of Osaka University of Foreign Studies.
"GHQ Kameraman ga Totta Sengo Nippon" (Japan After World War II by a GHQ photographer, Volume I), published in May by Tokyo's Archives Publishing Co., features postwar scenes from Tokyo intermixed with images of famous figures such as Emperor Showa and Gen. Douglas MacArthur, and focuses on daily life in Tokyo and the political and social situation of the nation at the time.
Volume II, published in July, focuses on the postwar lives of ordinary citizens in prefectures such as Kyoto, Hokkaido and Okinawa.
The photographer, Dimitri Boria (1902-1990), an Albanian-born American, came to Japan in 1947 at the request of the GHQ to record the situation in Japan and stayed until 1961.
Before coming to Japan, Boria worked in Italy, Germany and Yugoslavia as a photographer for the United Nations.
A number of the pictures in Volume II were taken as he followed Emperor Showa around the nation.
Each volume contains more than 200 images selected from 30,000 from the collection of The MacArthur Memorial in Virginia.
Volume II focuses on the culture and lifestyle of ordinary people, who regularly became the subjects of Boria's camera during his tour with the emperor.
Volume II includes 31 pictures taken in Kyoto, including scenes near Kyoto Station, central Kyoto and one of the ancient city's red-light districts. It also features a photograph of students visiting Kiyomizudera temple during a school excursion and one of children playing in the street.
One picture shows a far less-crowded version of an area near Kyoto Station that is known for its many tourists and taxis.
Volume II also devotes space to Okinawa Prefecture, where fierce World War II battles were waged between Japan and the United States and the eventual location of important U.S. military bases.
The Okinawa section contains 36 pictures of scenes from everyday life--everything from girls selling commodities to customers in a dusty, crowded Naha market to women at a construction site carrying materials on their heads. Another picture shows an elderly woman in a kimono selling dried cuttlefish and other seafood.
Sugita learned about The MacArthur Memorial's photo collection from the president of Archives Publishing in the summer of 2006. Sugita, who advised the firm to publish the pictures, was put in charge of selecting the photos for the books.
The memorial's collections are open to the viewing public. However, Sugita said, many of the pictures had never been seen in Japan.
"Most of the images from the books were never released here," Sugita said. "Some pictures had already been released in Japanese books, but in poor quality or in black and white. We selected pictures that were historically significant or that would look high quality after even being enlarged."
A Volume I picture of U.S. soldiers with a GHQ flag marching through Sakuradamon, a gate of the Imperial Palace, was chosen because it symbolized the relationship at the time between Japan and the United States.
Another highlight of Volume I finds Emperor Showa smiling for Boria's camera.
"Emperor Showa, who had been regarded as a living god, showed his human side," Sugita said.
Volume I also includes pictures of the emperor attending events such as a planting festival, as well as pictures from the International Military Tribunal for the Far East: Tokyo Trial.
Volume I features photos from an event celebrating the San Francisco Peace Treaty and the fifth anniversary of the Constitution coming into force in 1952, with Emperor Showa and then Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida in attendance.
Pictures of ordinary people in Tokyo, such as boys playing baseball, are also featured in the first volume.
"This is the first time that Boria's collection has been published in a scale this large and of this quality," Sugita said. "I hope readers will discover something new in the books."
Volume I, "GHQ Kameraman ga Totta Sengo Nippon" and Volume II, "Zoku GHQ Kameraman ga Totta Sengo Nippon," retail in bookstores for 4,700 yen each, tax not included.