Toyo Miyatake Photobook

[Photographic Album Commemorating the Japan (Kanto) Earthquake Relief Work] Bokoku shinsai kyuusai jigyou kinen shashin jou

Miyatake, Toyo (photographer); Shikanosuke Sasai et al. (compiled by)

Publication: Los Angeles: Bokoku Shinsai Kyuusai Jigyou Kinen Shashincho Hakkojo [Office for the Publication of the Photographic Album....], 1923 (Taisho 12). First Edition.

Notes: A major photo-illustrated book from the lens of Toyo Miyatake, perhaps the most acclaimed Japanese American photographer of his generation. Miyatake is credited as photographer (寫眞技師) on the colophon and many, if not most, of the uncredited photographs of the Japanese community in Los Angeles are likely his work. Miyatake studied with Edward Weston and opened his own studio the year this book was published. When he was interned at Manzanar, he smuggled in a lens and other parts and fashioned a homemade camera, surreptitiously photographing the camp, contrary to the rules. Weston helped him obtain a proper camera. Miyatake is best known for that body of work.

Miyatake photographed groups of people and organization members. He also captured moments of Japanese American life in Los Angeles: a baseball game; a dramatic theatrical scene; a building adorned with many Japanese and American flags; scenes of young Japanese Christian women raising money on the streets of downtown Los Angeles; and scenes inside the editorial department of the Japanese Daily News.

This printed photo album commemorates the Los Angeles area fundraising efforts to provide relief for the 1923 Kanto earthquake, which destroyed Tokyo and Yokohama and left 100,000 people dead. The first 20-odd pages of this album are devoted to before and after images in Japan. The next forty pages are devoted to fundraising events held in Los Angeles's Japantown. The events included music, theater, and dance performances, as well as a bazaar. Typical of such books, the final section is devoted to some forty pages of ads from Japanese American businesses as well as nearly 400 individual contributors, listed by name and their home village in Japan.

"An album of an emergency committee in Southern California established to render assistance to the victims of the 1923 Kanto earthquake"—A Buried Past, 965.

"After the Great Earthquake, the Japanese American community organized an active relief project that included general American groups and people. Includes photographs of disastrous scenes in Japan as well as groups and people who participated in the project."—Japanese American National Museum bibliography, 152.

[4], 66, [44] pages. 12 by 9-1/2 inches (oblong).

OCLC: 672981923 (Japan only) and UCLA (not in OCLC).

Edition + Condition: First edition. A very good copy, string-bound in paper covers, as issued. With a long split at the spine and typical wear to the yapped edges.

Item No: #366147

Price: $3,500