Bishin Jumonji (十文字美信, Jūmonji Bishin^?) is a photographer who has done advertising, portrait, architectural, and other work.

Jumonji was born in Yokohama on 4 March 1947. He worked as an assistant to Kishin Shinoyama and went freelance in 1971, when he was the cameraman for advertisements for Matsushita Electric and Shiseido products. Yokohama (Japanese: 横浜市; -shi) is the capital city of Kanagawa Prefecture in Japan. ... March 4 is the 63rd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (64th in leap years). ... 1947 (MCMXLVII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1947 calendar). ... Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. ... Shiseido Co. ...

The association with Matsushita would later bring awards from the Art Directors Club every year from 1975 till 1979. Jumonji has continued to do editorial and commercial work (notably for Hayashibara Biochemical Laboratories); while much of this owes a lot to its art direction as well as photography, Jumonji's advertising work has been uncommonly ambitious and witty. The Art Directors Club is a professional association of advertising art directors and graphic designers. ...

In 1972 he joined an exhibition of portraits (in Kinokuniya Gallery at Shinjuku) of Simon Yotsuya, with nine other photographers.^[1] Neon signs along Yasukuni-dori in Shinjuku Shinjuku (新宿区 -ku) is one of the 23 special wards of Tokyo, Japan. ...

Jumonji had started taking his "Untitled" series of portraits of people framed to exclude their heads in 1971. In 1972, these appeared in the magazine Camera Mainichi and were shown in a gallery in New York; a year later they were included within "New Japanese Photography", at the New York MoMA. View across garden, in new MoMA building by Yoshio Taniguchi (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. ...

Down till 1980, Jumonji made nineteen trips to Hawaiʻi, photographing the islands and photographing and interviewing elderly first-generation Japanese immigrants. The series counterposes color photographs of Hawaiʻi and black and white portraits of the people living there. Installments were published in Camera Mainichi in 1979 and the set was exhibited in 1980, when it won the Ina Nobuo Award. It was published, as Orchid Boat, in 1981. Official language(s) Hawaiian and English Capital Honolulu Largest city Honolulu Area  - Total  - Width  - Length  - % water  - Latitude  - Longitude Ranked 43rd 28,337 km² n/a km 2,450 km 41. ... The Issei Japanese Americans (一世 lit. ...

In 1981, Jumonji went to Indochina to photograph the religious customs of the Yao people. In 1983–4 he visited Thailand, Burma and Laos. The result was published as Sumitōtta yami in 1987. The Yao nationality (瑶族, Pinyin: Yáo zú; Vietnamese: người Dao) are an ethnic group. ...

Jumonji had started photographing gold works of art in 1981. The first exhibition of the results was in Matsuya department store (Ginza), in 1987. This work culminated in the large and lavishly produced book Ōgon fūtenjin, published in 1990.^[2] This won the Domon Ken Award the following year. Some of these works would also be shown in in two of a set of four volumes of stereoscopes, all photographed by Jumonji and published in 1993–4. Matsuya Co. ... The Ginza area of Tokyo, Japan The Wako department store occupies a busy corner in Ginza Ginza (銀座) is a place in Chūō Ward, Tokyo named after the silver coin foundry or Ginza established here in 1612 (Edo period). ... Stereo card image modified for crossed eye viewing View of Manhattan, c. ...

Jumonji started photographing architecture and gardens in 1988, and specifically the Katsura Detached Palace in 1991. Garden of Katsura Imperial Villa Katsura Imperial Villa or Katsura Detached Palace (jp: 桂離宮 Katsura rikyū) is a villa with associated gardens and outbuildings in the western suburbs of Kyoto, Japan (in Nishikyo-ku, separate from the Kyoto Imperial Palace). ...

Jumonji photographed the ninth in the line of actors named Koshiro Matsumoto (松本幸四郎, Matsumoto Kōshirō; also named 高麗屋 Kōraiya) for a collection of black and white portraits of the same title; he has recently published a second volume of theatre portraits. Matsumoto Koshiro (松本幸四郎: Matsumoto Kōshirō) is the stage name of a line of kabuki actors in Japan. ...

In 1998, Jumonji started work on Wabi, his ambitious attempt at a depiction (in color) of the Japanese aesthetic ideal of wabi. The project started with cha-no-yu but branched out into scenes of the quotidian. Wabi-sabi (in Kanji: 侘寂) represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic. ... A woman wearing kimono performs a tea ceremony seated in seiza position on tatami. ...

Jumonji exhibited composite photographs of four Japanese waterfalls at the Shiseido Gallery (Ginza) in June and July 2004.^[3] The Ginza area of Tokyo, Japan The Wako department store occupies a busy corner in Ginza Ginza (銀座) is a place in Chūō Ward, Tokyo named after the silver coin foundry or Ginza established here in 1612 (Edo period). ...

Jumonji's photographs have appeared in Zoom and Stern. Stern (English Star) is a weekly news magazine published in Germany. ...

Notes

1. ↑ Toshihiro Asakura, Taiji Arita, Yasuhiro Ishimoto, Noriaki Kano, Hajime Sawatari, Kishin Shinoyama, Eiko Hosoe, Kōichi Miyazaki, and Ichiro Morita.
2. ↑ Ōgon means gold; but fūtenjin is harder to translate, meaning vagabond(s) or madman/men.
3. ↑ The four are Kegon (Tochigi), Shindō (Ōita), Shōmyō (Toyama), and Unoko (Kumamoto).

Yasuhiro Ishimoto (b. ... Professor Noriaki Kano is the developer of a program whose simple ranking scheme distinguishes between essential and differentiating attributes related to concepts of customer quality. ... Kegon Falls are located at Lake Chuzenji (source of the Oshiri River) in Nikko National Park in the city of Nikko, Tochigi Prefecture, Japan. ... Tochigi Prefecture (栃木県 Tochigi-ken) is a located in the Kanto region on the island of Honshu, Japan. ... Ōita Prefecture (大分県; Ōita-ken) is located on Kyushu Island, Japan. ... Toyama Prefecture (富山県; Toyama-ken) is located in the Chubu region on Honshu island, Japan. ... Kumamoto Prefecture (熊本県; Kumamoto-ken) is located on Kyushu Island, Japan. ...

Bibliography

Books by Jumonji

• Ran no fune (『蘭の舟』) / Orchid Boat. 冬樹社, 1981. The title alone is in English as well as Japanese: all the text is in Japanese only.
• Kéntauros. Tokyo: CBS Sony, 1984. ISBN 4789701328
• Sumitōtta yami (『澄み透った闇』, "Darkness becoming visible"). Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 1987. ISBN 4393332032
• Ōgon fūtenjin (『黄金風 天人』). Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1990. ISBN 4096993719 Brief captions in English; all other text in Japanese only.
• Katsura rikyū (『桂離宮』, "Katsura Detached Palace"). Nihon Mei-kenchiku shashin senshū 19. Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1993. ISBN 4106026384 With text by Teiji Itō (伊藤ていじ, Itō Teiji^?) and Satoshi Yamato (大和智, Yamato Satoshi^?). Captions and text in Japanese only.
• Poketto butsuzō (『ポケット仏像』) / A Pocketful of Buddhist Statues. 3D Stereo Museum. Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1993. Vol. 1 ISBN 410395101X Vol 2 ISBN 4103951028
• Poketto ni ōgon (『ポケットに黄金』) / A Pocketful of Golden Treasures. 3D Stereo Museum. Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1994. ISBN 4103951036
• Poketto ni Byōdō-in (『ポケットに平等院』) / A Pocketful of Uji Byodo-in Temple. 3D Stereo Museum. Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1994. ISBN 4103951044
• Katsura rikyū (『桂離宮』, "Katsura Detached Palace"). Tonbo no hon. Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1996. ISBN 4106020432 With text by Machi Tawara (俵万智, Tawara Machi^?). Captions and text in Japanese only.
• Jūmonji Bishin no shigoto to shūhen (『十文字美信の仕事と周辺』, "The work and surroundings of Bishin Jumonji"). Artist, Director and Designer Scan no. 10. Tokyo: Rikuyōsha, 2000. ISBN 4897373573 Samples of Jumonji's personal and advertising work, and particularly valuable for the latter. Captions and text in Japanese only.
• Wabi (『わび』) / Wabi. Kyoto: Tankōsha, 2002. ISBN 4473019446 Captions and text in both Japanese and English.
• Koshiro Matsumoto. Purejidento, 2002. ISBN 4833417456
• Ochiru mizu (『落ちる水』) / Water Falls. Tokyo: Shiseidō Kigyō Bunkabu, 2004. A set of cards in a box, for the exhibition held in June and July 2004.
• Nippon gekigan (『日本劇顔』) / Nippon geki-gan: Dramatic portraits of actors and actresses. Tokyo: Pia, 2005. ISBN 4835615786

Others

• Matsuoka, Seigow (松岡正剛, Matsuoka Seigō). Yūkō no hakubutsugaku (『遊行の博物学』, "Diverting museology"). Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 1987. ISBN 4393331095 Jumonji contributes a number of photographs for chapter 5, about gold works of art.
• Szarkowski, John, and Shoji Yamagishi. New Japanese Photography. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1974. ISBN 0870705032 (hard), ISBN 0870705032 (paper)

External links

• (Japanese) Official site (requires Flash)
• Water Falls the 2004 exhibition
• (Japanese) Sumitōtta yami This article by Seigow Matsuoka ranges further than the one book, and has sample photographs.