Shōtarō Akiyama

Shōtarō Akiyama studied at Waseda University. The recorded working language is Japanese. The field of work recorded is photography, portrait photography and nude. Work by Shōtarō Akiyama is recorded in the collections of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Distinctions recorded are Medal with Purple Ribbon.

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. The year he graduated, anticipating conscription, he privately published the photobook Kage, a work he described as "a headstone to his youth." 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. In 1946 he decided to become a professional photographer and opened the Akiyama Photo Studio (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. 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. A retrospective serial in Yomiuri Weekly later credited him with opening up the field of nude photography for weekly magazines. 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. 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.