Photo Record of Japanese American Entrepreneurs in 1935

[Album of Japanese Business Families Residing Along the Pacific Coast in America] Taiheiyo engan zaibei doho jigyoka shashincho

Ajisaka, Aisuke (editor)

Notes: Perhaps the most extensive photographic record of the entrepreneurial Japanese American middle class before the Second World War, illustrated with more than 500 full-page halftone photographs of families, farms, shops, restaurants, and hotels. The photos are captioned with information about the people depicted and their business. Many of the photos include the mark of Jackson Studio, which given the book's publication in Seattle, likely means Jackson Photo Studio, owned by James Yoshinori Sakamoto, the publisher of the English-language Japanese American Courier newspaper (see 1939 Polk Directory for Seattle, p. 1340). Who the photographer was will require additional research as Sakamoto went blind in the late 1920s.

Seven years after this book was published, most people depicted in this substantial book were forcibly relocated to internment camps and almost all of their businesses were shuttered. Ajisake Aisuke's documentary record of these entrepreneurial families brings home the economic devastation soon to be wreaked by internment.

"Photographs of families, stores, hotels, restaurants, farmlands, etc. in the states of Washington, Oregon, and California. Captions identify families and their former addresses in Japan."—Japanese American National Museum bibliography, 19.

[22], 500, [65] pages. The final section includes photographs of cultural organizations, actors, hotels, and ads for various businesses (including a few in Japan).

OCLC: 708712352 (Stanford, Yale)

Edition + Condition: First edition. A very good copy (some abrasion to the binding cloth at the edges) in a good to very good cloth case lacking one of the bone ties.

Publication: Seattle: Ajisaka Toyo Kankodan Jimusho [Ajisaka Toyo Tourist Organization Office], 1935 (Showa 10).

Item No: #362957

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