was a

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

photographer and occasional actor responsible for pioneering Japanese

homoerotic Homoeroticism is sexual attraction between members of the same sex, including both male–male and female–female attraction. The concept differs from the concept of homosexuality: it refers specifically to the desire itself, which can be tempor ...

photography and creating iconic

black-and-white Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white to produce a range of achromatic brightnesses of grey. It is also known as greyscale in technical settings. Media The history of various visual media began with black and white, ...

images of the Japanese male.

Biography

Yato was born in

Nishinomiya 270px, Nishinomiya City Hall 270px, Aerial view of Nishinomiya city center 1985 270px, Hirota Shrine is a city located in Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 484,368 in 218,948 households and a population density ...

in 1925 as Tamotsu Takeda. He was self-taught photographer and during his life never took part in any of the many photographic organizations which was customary in Japan that time. During his life he had been a day laborer, as well as working at the Nichigeki theater. Tamotsu Yato was a friend and collaborator of the writer

Yukio Mishima Kimitake Hiraoka ( , ''Hiraoka Kimitake''; 14 January 192525 November 1970), known by his pen name Yukio Mishima ( , ''Mishima Yukio''), was a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor, model, Shintoist, Ultranationalism (Japan), ultranationalis ...

and the film critic

Donald Richie Donald Richie (April 17, 1924 – February 19, 2013) was an American-born author who wrote about the Japanese people, the culture of Japan, and especially Japanese cinema. Although he considered himself primarily a film historian, Richie also ...

, as well as a long-term romantic partner of Meredith Weatherby, an expatriate American publisher and translator of Mishima's works into English. Meredith, who was president of the Weatherhill publishing house, bought Yato his first camera, and his friends showed him how to use it. Yato completed three volumes of photography. In the preface to his 1972 collection Otoko, Tamotsu Yato wrote: Even though Yato's work received only a limited public distribution, it has attained a cult following and has been acknowledged as a major influence by a number of artists working with male erotica. Thus,

Sadao Hasegawa was a Japanese graphic artist known for creating homoerotic fetish art. His works are noted for their extensive detail, elaborate fantasy settings, and for their juxtaposition of elements from Japanese, Balinese, Thai, Tibetan Buddhist, Afric ...

remarks in his ''Paradise Visions'': "Tamotsu Yato achieved fame by creating Otoko, a picture book. He photographed Yukio Mishima, nude. His subjects: traditional, muscular, unsophisticated countryside men, are mostly extinct today. Otoko was valuable because you could see these long-bodied, stout-legged, cropped hair, square-jawed men... Good-bye, men of Nippon!" Tamotsu Yatō died in sleep in his apartment in

Takadanobaba is a neighborhood in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan. History Originally, the area's name was read ''Takatanobaba'' and many Tokyo residents in their 50s or older pronounce it as such. However, younger Tokyoites and residents who have come from outside ...

from a heart condition at the age of forty-eight. After his death, Meredith Weatherby took his negatives to California. They later went into the possession of Fumio Mizuno, who owns them to this day.

Books by Tamotsu Yato

*''Taidō: Nihon no bodibirudā-tachi'' (). Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1966; English version: ''Young Samurai: Bodybuilders of Japan'', New York: Grove Press, 1967. With an introduction by

. *'' Hadaka matsuri'' (). Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppansha, 1969; English version: ''Naked festival: A Photo-Essay'', New York/Tokyo: John Weatherhill, 1968. With an introduction by

and essays by Tatsuo Hagiwara, Mutsuro Takahashi, and Kozo Yamaji. Translated and adapted for Western readers by Meredith Weatherby and Sachiko Teshima. *''Otoko: Photo-Studies of the Young Japanese Male'', Los Angeles: Rho-Delta Press, 1972. Dedicated to the memory of

Notes

References

* Angles, Jeffrey
Interview with Takahashi Mutsuo
''Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context,'' Issue 12, January 2006. Briefly discusses Yatō's sex life and declining health. * Richie, Donald. ''The Japan Journals: 1947–2004'', Stone Bridge Press (2005). Donald Richie's autobiography mentioning Yato in a number of different context
(browsable scanned version at GoogleBooks)
* Richie, Donald. ''Naked Festival: The Art of Tamotsu Yato'', Kyoto Journal no. 44, Kyoto / New York, 2000. * Tagame, Gengoroh
Gay Erotic Art in Japan vol. 2: Transitions of Gay Fantasy in the Times
(PDF file)

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yato, Tamotsu Japanese photographers Japanese erotic artists Japanese gay artists Japanese LGBTQ photographers Gay photographers 1920s births 1973 deaths 20th-century Japanese LGBTQ people

Biography

Books by Tamotsu Yato

Notes

See also

References

External links