Ihei Kimura is a photographer who connected the quick-shooting capacity of the small camera to literary portraits, Tokyo street corners, life in Akita, and the circulation of photojournalism. Beyond the common epithet of “master of the Leica,” this page sets out his institutional influence, reaching into postwar realism, print media, the Japan Professional Photographers Society, and the Kimura Ihei Award.
Ihei Kimura did not merely use the Leica as a new piece of equipment. By connecting the speed of the small camera to facial expression, the atmosphere of a street corner, rural life, and the form of photojournalism circulating in magazines, he lightly reorganized the way reality was seen in Japanese photography.
This site does not display work images. Please see the official, museum, and photography-institution resources below.
Contents · Table of Contents
Ihei Kimura was born in 1901 in Shitaya, Tokyo; after opening a photographic studio at home in 1924, he began working as a professional photographer in 1929 in the advertising department of Kao Soap*1.
In the 1930s he published snapshots of Tokyo’s old downtown in Kōga, and drew attention with the 1933 “Exhibition of Literary Portraits by Leica”*1.
In 1950 he became the first president of the Japan Professional Photographers Society, serving as president until 1957*6.
The Tokyo Photographic Art Museum confirms in his biography that Kimura, together with Ken Domon, promoted amateur instruction and the realism photography movement*1.
The small camera and the snapshot
The Tokyo Photographic Art Museum sets out that Kimura early on discerned the expressive possibilities of the small cameras that came into practical use in the 1920s, and that he established his reputation with literary portraits and snapshots that swiftly captured everyday life in Tokyo’s old downtown*1.
The Shadai Gallery explains that Kimura purchased a Leica Model A in 1930 and, together with Yonosuke Natori, opened up a new realm of photojournalism*5.
Photojournalism and print media
The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo’s 2004 exhibition traced Kimura’s work under the keyword of “photojournalism,” and for his activity from the early period to just after the war’s end it displayed many printed materials such as magazines and posters that used photographs*2.
Materials from the Kōga exhibition position Ihei Kimura, together with Yasuzo Nojima and Iwata Nakayama, as a central figure of the magazine published from 1932 to 1933*3.
Tokyo’s old downtown, Akita, and Paris
The Shadai Gallery sets out works such as Street Corners, Akita, and Shin Jinkokuki not as conventional photojournalism but as snapshots carrying Kimura’s own private gaze*5.
Akita is explained as a representative series made over 21 visits from 1952 to 1972*5.
The shashasha artist profile sets out that Kimura traveled to Europe several times in the mid-1950s, and that his color photobook of Paris was published in 1974*9.
MoMA includes Kimura on an artist page, recording online works and an exhibition history that includes The Family of Man*4.
In 2004 the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo held Ihei Kimura: The Man with the Camera, showing 131 works and reconstructing his work from the early period through the postwar years*2.
The Tokyo Photographic Art Museum’s 2024 Ihei Kimura: Living Through Photography, 50 Years After His Death also gave a special showing of the exhibition prints from “Journey to China,” the recently discovered last solo exhibition held during his lifetime*1.
Asahi Shimbun Publications explains that the Kimura Ihei Award is a photography prize established by the Asahi Shimbun Company in 1975 to commemorate Kimura’s achievements*7.