Shōtarō Akiyama

Akiyama was born on June 8, 1920, in the Kanda district of Tokyo. He first took up photography in middle school, after a camera sparked an interest, and continued in the photography club during his studies at the First Waseda Higher School and at Waseda University, where he graduated from the Faculty of Commerce in 1943.^[2][3] The year he graduated, anticipating conscription, he privately published the photobook Kage (翳), a work he described as "a headstone to his youth."^[2] After briefly working for the Tanabe Seiyaku pharmaceutical company, he was conscripted into the Imperial Army and served on the China front before being transferred home in 1945 at the war's end.^[2]

In 1946 he decided to become a professional photographer and opened the Akiyama Photo Studio (秋山写真工房 (Akiyama Shashin Kōbō)) in Tokyo's Ginza; the studio failed financially and closed the following year. On the recommendation of the photographer Tadahiko Hayashi, whom he had met during this period, Akiyama joined the staff of the film magazine Kindai Eigasha, where he gained a reputation for portraits of actresses. He also joined the photography group Ginryūsha, founded by Hayashi and others, and in 1953 he was among the founding members of the new photography section of the Nika Art Association.^[2]

In 1951 Akiyama left Kindai Eigasha to work freelance. Over the following decades he handled cover photographs and gravure serials for several weekly magazines, including Shūkan Bunshun and Shūkan Sankei, developing a much-imitated style of magazine photography centred on women.^[2] A retrospective serial in Yomiuri Weekly later credited him with opening up the field of nude photography for weekly magazines.^[4]

Beyond his editorial work, Akiyama held senior positions in the Japanese photographic establishment over several decades. He was a founding member of the Japan Photographers Society (1950) and of the Japan Advertising Photographers Association (1958), serving as vice-president of the former from 1963 to 1964 and as president of the latter from 1971 to 1979, and he served in other executive roles in the Japan Photographic Society and the All-Japan Photographic Federation. He also served for many years as head of the Nihon Photo Arts Technical School.^[2]

Akiyama died of a heart attack on January 16, 2003, while serving as a juror, at a hospital in Chūō, Tokyo, at the age of 82.^[2]

Akiyama's work was characterized by what his obituary in the Year Book of Japanese Art described as "elegant lyricism": he avoided excessive technique or staging and sought to discover beauty in his subjects' natural appearance, an approach he maintained consistently from his early years to the end of his career. In his magazine cover portraits of women he was credited with being among the first to use black backgrounds, a choice previously considered taboo, which helped win him wide public popularity.^[2]

Though best known for his women's photography, Akiyama also produced distinguished portraits of men, collected in 作家の風貌―159人 (The countenances of writers: 159 portraits) (1977) and 画家の風貌と素描 (The countenances of painters, with sketches) (1980). From his mid-forties onward he devoted growing attention to photographs of flowers, which became a life's work and a new body of representative pieces in his later years.^[2]

In 1971 Akiyama received the award of the first exhibition of the Japan Advertising Photographers Association together with the Tokyo Art Directors Club award. In 1974 he received the fifth Kōdansha Publishing Culture Award for his cover serial in Shūkan Gendai and his series "The Countenances of Writers" in Shūkan Shōsetsu.^[2] He was awarded the Medal with Purple Ribbon in 1986 and the Order of the Rising Sun, fourth class, in 1993.^[2]

Retrospective exhibitions of Akiyama's work were held at the Yokohama Civic Art Gallery in 1991, the Tokuyama City Museum of Art in 1998, and the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum in 2002. The Machida Photo Salon, opened in 1999, includes a permanent display room devoted to him.^[2]