40 Fascinating Black and White Photos Capture Street Scenes of Kyoto, Japan in 1974

Kyoto is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, it forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe.

The city was spared from large-scale destruction during World War II and as a result, its prewar cultural heritage has mostly been preserved.

Kyoto is considered the cultural capital of Japan and a major tourist destination. It is home to numerous Buddhist temples, Shinto shrines, palaces and gardens. Prominent landmarks include the Kyoto Imperial Palace, Kiyomizu-dera, Kinkaku-ji, Ginkaku-ji and the Katsura Imperial Villa.

Kyoto is also a center of higher learning, with Kyoto University being an institution of international renown.

These black and white photos were taken by Jussi Salmiakkinen that show street scenes of Kyoto in October 1974.

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Fascinating Photos Capture Street Scenes of Tokyo in the Early 1980s

Tokyo experienced an economic boom in the 1980s, with an unemployment rate of 4.9%, a low number compared to the succeeding decade. The anime and manga industries also flourished during this era, as well as in the television industry.

Hence, the collective Japanese entertainment industry became a strong force to be reckoned with, as the coming years would experience. The following decade would see Japan's economy decline substantially, giving rise to the name the Lost Decade.

A fascinating color photo collection from mksfca that shows street scenes of Tokyo in 1981.

Ikebukuro station

Akasuka district

Hama Rikyu Garden

Ikebukuro area

Ikebukuro area

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10 Striking Japanese Pop Music Cover Arts by Hiroshi Nagai

“Without American pop art I would not have to start painting the way I did. This experience made me paint my summer skies as deep blues from that point on. That said, surrealism was also a big influence, and of course hyper-realism.” – Hiroshi Nagai

Hiroshi Nagai is a Japanese artist raised at the countryside of Tokushima Prefecture. His initiatives to become an artist and move to Tokyo was through his father as his father was working on his oil paintings while Nagai was growing. Apart from his paintings he has also created some great album covers of Japanese pop music.

“When I did grew up in the 1950s in the countryside in Tokushima Prefecture, I saw my father working on his oil paintings,” Nagai said. “This was not his profession money-wise, but a hobby he did practiced with real dedication; he painted beautiful scenery. Seeing him doing so, brought me to painting – but in a much more modern style than my father and the people who lived around there.⁣ So I decided to go to Tokyo City to become an artist.”

Inspiration were surrealists of the last century, namely Rene Magritte and Salvador Dali, but apart from that significant part of his art is pop art and how it is perceived by U.S.

“But when I took the entrance examination for Art University, I didn’t pass. Instead I chose to take a sketching course with the new goal to become a fashion illustrator. A goal which I did not follow for long as I realized that it was not appropriate, I still longed to be part of the art community of Tokyo. At that time I was very much interested in the works of surrealist artists like Rene Magritte and Salvador Dali. So instead of fashion illustration I worked for TV production companies, painting their film sets, stages and backdrops. It was only a part-time job, and most of the time quite monotonous as I mainly had to produce black and white pictures – but it was a great starting point.”

1. Issei Okamoto – Moonlight Mystery (Discomate, 1980)

2. Eiichi Ohtaki – A Long Vacation (Niagara, 1981)

3. Niagara Fall Of Sound Orchestral – Niagara Song Book (Niagara, 1982)

4. Naoya Matsuoka & Wesing – The September Wind (Warner Bros., 1982)

5. Pedro & Capricious – Sun Patio (Colombia, 1983)

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How the Original Selfie Stick Was Invented in the 1980s

Before the word “selfie” was even coined, let alone in the dictionary. The first selfie stick was neither as elegant nor as successful as the latest models. The original patent was filed all the way back in 1983, before cell phones were ubiquitous.

The first selfie stick was invented by Hiroshi Ueda, at the time he worked for the Minolta camera company, and was a keen photographer. “Whenever I went overseas I took my camera with me and took loads of photos,” he told BBC.

But while traveling in Europe he encountered a problem. He was keen to get pictures of himself and his wife together - but passers-by couldn’t always be trusted.

“When I was in the Louvre Museum in Paris, I asked a child to take a photo of us, but when I stepped away, the child ran away with my camera,” he said.

After being frustrated with the photo skills of passers-by ruining his vacation memories — remember, this is in the days of film photography — Ueda decided to use his engineering skills to take things in his own hands, literally.

He ended up creating an “extender stick,” which was a metal, extendable stick with a tripod screw on which he mounted a compact camera with a mirror attached to the front.

The photo above shows Ueda holding his invention, and here’s one of the early photos he captured with his early selfie stick:

Ueda filed a patent for the invention in 1983, and it was published by the US patent office in 1985. The document was titled “Telescopic extender for supporting compact camera.” Here’s what the description said:

“A telescopic extender for supporting a compact camera includes a head member to be attached to the camera, a grip to be held and a telescopic rod member connecting the head member to the grip. A screw member is supported by the head member in a manner that the screw member is rotatable about the axis perpendicular to an extending and collapsing direction of the telescopic rod. The grip can accomodate therein the telescopic rod when the telescopic rod is completely collapsed.”

Unfortunately for Ueda, this original idea never took off. Although Minolta did bring the device to market, it didn’t have many sales and was never a commercial success.

“It didn’t sell very well,” he admitted. “The quality of the picture wasn’t very good.”

Nevertheless, he kept faith with his invention. “I always, always carried a pocket camera and extender stick with me,” he said. “It’s like an extension of my arm. Whenever I want to extend it, I pull it out, and whenever I’m just walking around, I fold it up.”

Ueda’s patent ran out in 2003, at least a decade before the recent boom in selfie sticks, but he’s philosophical about this. “My idea came too early, but that’s just one of those things. I patented about 300 ideas, so that was just one of them. We call it a 3am invention - it arrived too early.”

Ueda’s device may not have made a splash in the world of photo-taking, but it did make him the godfather of the selfie stick.

(h/t BBC)

15 Cool Pics That Defined the Youth Fashion Trends of Tokyo in the 1980s

A cool pic collection from Bear in Mind that shows what the youth of Tokyo in the 1980s looked like.

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Sukeban: 20 Amazing Photographs Capture Badass Girl Gangs in Japan From the 1970s and 1980s

Sukeban refers to delinquent girl gangs or more correctly the boss girl in a gang. Sukeban first appeared in Japan during the 1960s, as a female equivalent to the male banchō gangs. By the 1970s banchō gangs were starting die-out, as the country saw the rise of the sukeban girl gangs. Initially the gangs started as small groups of girls sneaking cigarettes in the bathroom at school, but soon grew in numbers and the level of criminality they became involved in.

The gangs grew in the 1970s, and had a reputation for violence and shop-lifting. Gangs ranged in sized from Tokyo's United Shoplifters group, which numbered somewhere around 80 girls, through to the largest gang which was known as the Kanto Women Delinquent Alliance, rumored to have had around 20,000 members. Making them bigger and more organized than the more well known Japanese organized crime gangs of the Yakuza. The idea of delinquent gangs of girls entered common culture in Japan in the early 70s, when they were featured in a number of exploitation movies known as Pink Films (in a sub-genre referred to as "Pinky violence").

Sukeban identified themselves as gang members though having brightly dyed or permed hair, and by wearing school uniforms that they'd altered, by rolling up their sleeve, lengthening their skirts covered in gang affiliated symbols and slogans. The sukeban girls followed strict rules and codes of conduct within their gangs, and breaking them would result in "lynching". Lynching involved several degrees of punishment, but burning with cigarettes was a common punishment for minor infringements of the rules. Reasons for punishment ranged from showing disrespect to the senior members, speaking to rival gangs, cheating with someone else's boyfriend or being caught doing drugs. Although sniffing paint thinner or glue was a common activity among girl gang members.

It was common for girls to carry razor blades, which were easily concealed, through to chains and bamboo swords they'd stolen from the school gym. The criminal activities and violence of the girl gangs in Japan, reached such a high that they were described by Japanese police pamphlets in the 1980s as "omens of downfall". Despite authorities attempts to quell the girl gang culture in the 1980s and 1990s, there has been a recent rise in gang membership. Sukeban have become popular characters in both Japanese fiction, manga, anime and movies.

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42 Beautiful Photos of Japanese Girls in Traditional Dresses From the Early 20th Century

A photo set that shows portraits of Japanese girls in their traditional dresses from between the 1900s and 1920s.

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22 Cheesy Vintage Ads for Arcade and Video Games From 1980s Japan

These cheesy vintage gaming ads from 1980s Japan offered consumers a sense they were hot, sexy, in control and tough. They depict the retro-gaming covers and the first golden age of video games.

History, traditional culture, and social standing were no longer the dominant forces in shaping young people’s lives. It was now about who could afford to buy a games consul and spend their money in gaming arcades. It was a revolutionary moment, unlike these ads for the likes of Nihon Bussan, Sega, and Capcom, which relied mainly on text, hot young women, muscled-up beefcake guys and dayglo bright colors to sell their products.

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36 Stunning Hand Colored Photographs That Capture Everyday Life in Japan From Between the 1870s and 1880s

When Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre introduced photography to the public in 1839 it generated much interest and excitement. But for many, including Daguerre, the lack of color in an otherwise “highly realistic medium” proved to be a disappointment. Early research and efforts to produce color photographs aroused public demand and eventually led to the popularity of hand-colored photographs, which proved to be the simplest and most effective way for photographers to satisfy public desire.

Introduced in Europe in the 1840s, the practice of hand coloring photographs became more refined and widespread in Japan. By the 1880s, it had become a common practice and a defining characteristic of Japanese tourist photography. Various sources attribute British artist Charles Wirgman and photographer Felice Beato with introducing this technique, but in Photography in Japan, 1853-1912, Terry Bennett cites early newspaper advertisements and a review in the Japan Herald in suggesting that British photographer William Saunders “may have been the first” to offer hand-colored photographs in 1862. Still, it is generally acknowledged that Beato popularized the style of hand coloring that many other photographers embraced during the Meiji period (1868-1912).

Following the Meiji Restoration, photographs largely replaced woodblock prints in popularity, although famous ukiyo-e prints were frequently imitated in Japanese tourist photography. With a dramatic decline in production, many Japanese artists who worked in woodblock print shops became unemployed. But the growing market for photography offered them a new opportunity to apply their talents. The technical skill of some artists reflected a method of application that raised the practice of hand coloring photographs to a respected art of striking beauty. A photograph taken in 1867 or 1868 by Felice Beato, entitled “Our Painter” in his published album Photographic Views of Japan, portrays a Japanese man holding a palette and brush. The portrait suggests Beato recognized and appreciated the skill of this artist in contributing to the distinctive quality of his work.

Most of the hand-colored photographs in Japan are monochrome albumen prints made from wet collodion or dry plate glass negatives. Although it is possible some subtle tones of brown and purple could have been brought out by the photographer in the development process, color was added by artists, or colorists, using water-soluble pigments, which were more transparent than the oil paints commonly used in the West. Working on a low wooden table laid out with brushes, inkstones, and porcelain bowls, artists applied colors, prepared with a small amount of buckskin glue, in a delicate and precise manner. In the 1880s and 1890s they began using more vivid colors made from aniline dyes. Today, these artificial colors can appear harsh or “loud” in contrast to “the softness of natural pigments and albumen.” When more than one print from a negative was required, an artist would create a template to ensure consistency. But copies of the same photograph by different colorists from different studios show variations in color and technique that suggest they were allowed some artistic freedom.

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Before Fast Food Delivery, Here Are Some Amazing Photographs of Soba Noodle Cyclists of Early 20th Century Japan

Fast food delivery has changed drastically since the old days of demae (which literally “to go in front of”) in Japan. Before cell phones, apps, and online ordering existed, deliverymen used a special technique for stacking towers of food on their shoulders as they biked to places filled with frequent customers, such as universities. One popular food was soba–buckwheat noodles that can be eaten cold with dipping sauce or served in hot broth–because it was affordable and could be carried around without losing flavor or appearance.

Demae is thought to have originated during the mid-Edo period in the 1700s. It was primarily used by wealthy daimyo, feudal lords who would send servants to let shopkeepers know that they wanted food delivered to their homes. Over time, demae evolved into a more mainstream practice enjoyed by everyone from students to office workers.

Because there were no telephones, you couldn’t exactly call in an order. Deliverymen devolved a skilled technique for stacking towers of soba noodle bowls and then carrying them on a bike to places like universities where they had frequent customers. Astonishingly, some of these photos are from soba shops that are still in business today!

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