Toyo Miyatake

Japanese-born photographer

• Pronunciation: TOH-yoh mih-YAH-tah-keh
• Born: October 28, 1895
• Birthplace: Takashino, Kagawa, Japan
• Died: February 22, 1979
• Place of death: Los Angeles, California

The son of a Japanese immigrant, Miyatake established himself in the United States as a celebrated photographer. He owned a photography studio in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles, California. During World War II, Miyatake lived at the Manzanar War Relocation Center, an experience he documented with his camera.

Birth name: Toyoo Miyatake

Area of achievement: Photography

Early Life

Toyo Miyatake was born Toyoo Miyatake on October 28, 1895 in the village of Takashino in Nakatado county, Kagawa prefecture, Japan. He spent his childhood in Zentsuji near Takashino. In 1909, Miyatake sailed to Seattle, Washington with his mother and two brothers to reunite with his father, who had immigrated to the United States several years earlier. By the time they arrived, his father had opened a Japanese confectionary shop in the Chinatown section of Los Angeles, California. The family settled in the house behind the shop, and when the shop relocated to Jackson Street in Little Tokyo several months later, they moved to a house nearby. Miyatake and his brothers attended Amelia Street Elementary School.

Early in his working life, Miyatake helped in the family business and picked grapes as a seasonal worker in Fresno. Around 1918, he began taking classes in photography offered by Harry K. Shigeta, who owned a photo studio in Little Tokyo. From Shigeta, Miyatake learned the basic techniques of photography. Around 1920, Miyatake became acquainted with Edward Weston, a renowned photographer who owned a studio in the Tropico (now Glendale) section of Los Angeles. Weston advised Miyatake to study traditional Japanese art forms, such as Japanese woodblock prints, in order to learn techniques of composition. During this time, Miyatake joined the Shakudo-sha, a group of Japanese painters, poets, and photographers in Little Tokyo. With this group, Miyatake helped organize exhibitions of Weston’s photographs in the late 1920s.

Life’s Work

In 1923, Miyatake bought Paris Photo Studio at 233 1/2 East First Street in Little Tokyo from Kaoru Akashi, who published a photographic book featuring the Japanese of Southern California in 1922. Miyatake renamed Akashi’s studio “Toyo Studio” and started to run the business with his wife, Hiro, whom he had married the previous year. Miyatake won the first prize at a photography exhibition by Japanese Americans in Los Angeles in 1924 and was a prizewinner at the 1926 London International Photography Exhibition. In 1929, Michio Ito, a Japanese modern dancer and choreographer, moved from New York to California. Ito performed frequently at the Hollywood Bowl and Pasadena Rose Bowl and taught dances in Los Angeles until 1941. Miyatake became Ito’s personal photographer, creating a series of photographs of him, as well as his colleagues and students. From Ito, Miyatake learned how to capture dance movements using theatrical lighting.

In 1932, Miyatake photographed the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. His photographs of the games appeared in the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shinbun. Several months later, Miyatake received a telegram informing him that his father, who had returned to Japan, was ill and in critical condition. With the help of his friends, who arranged exhibitions of his photographs to raise traveling costs, Miyatake and his wife and children boarded a ship to Japan. Although Miyatake’s father died while they were en route, the family travelled to his hometown. Miyatake returned to Los Angeles in December 1934. His wife and children followed in July 1935. In 1936, Miyatake opened Toyo Miyatake Studio at 364 East First Street in Little Tokyo. The studio soon became a beacon for the city’s Asian American culture, where various people, including Hollywood stars like Sesshu Hayakawa, gathered to exchange their thoughts on diverse subjects, ranging from the arts to social and political issues. During this time, Miyatake became the personal photographer of German-born writer Thomas Mann, who immigrated to the United States when World War II broke out in 1939.

Following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, establishing military zones within the United States. Based on this order, everyone of Japanese ancestry who lived on the West Coast underwent forcible relocation to a system of ten internment camps. In May 1942, the Miyatake family boarded a train to the Manzanar War Relocation Center in the Owens Valley, about 230 miles northeast of Los Angeles. The family stayed there for three and a half years. In 1943, photographer Ansel Adams visited Miyatake at Manzanar. Adams photographed the people living there, including the Miyatake family. Adams published a book based on the experience, Born Free and Equal, in 1944. After the war, Miyatake reopened his photo studio at 318 East First Street in Little Tokyo in 1946. The studio again became a meeting place for influential and accomplished people. Japanese musicians and actors began travelling to the United States in the early 1950s, and many visited Miyatake’s studio to have their portraits taken. During this time, Miyatake became a freelance photographer for the Japanese newspaper Rafu Shimpo. His studio continued to provide the photographs to the newspaper for the next three decades.

Miyatake and his wife had four children: Archie, Robert, Richard, and Minnie. Many of his children and grandchildren succeeded him in the photography profession. After Miyatake died on February 22, 1979, at the age of 83, his son Archie continued to run Toyo Miyatake Studio, moving it to the San Gabriel Valley in 1985. In 1992 Archie’s son, Alan, took charge of the business his grandfather founded.

Significance

Miyatake was a well-known figure in the Japanese American community in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, where he lived for most of his life. As a versatile photographer, he created not only studio portraits and wedding photos, but also pictorial photography with a modernist style, in which lighting and shades played a significant role. Filmmaker Robert A. Nakamura depicted Miyatake’s artistic development from the early 1920s in the 2002 documentary film Toyo Miyatake: Infinite Shades of Gray. Miyatake was also a journalistic photographer. His pictures of the Manzanar internment camp serve as a valuable document that reveal what happened to Japanese Americans during World War II. Filmmaker Junichi Suzuki tells the story of Miyatake’s Manzanar photography in the 2008 documentary film Toyo’s Camera.

Bibliography

Adams, Ansel, and Toyo Miyatake. Two Views of Manzanar: An Exhibition of Photographs. Ed. Graham Howe, Patrick Nagatani, and Scott Rankin. Los Angeles: Frederick S. Wight Art Gallery, 1978. Print. Catalogs an exhibition of photographs by Adams and Miyatake, held at University of California, Los Angeles, between November 1978 and January 1979.

Alinder, Jasmine. Moving Images: Photography and the Japanese American Incarceration. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2009. Print. Includes a detailed discussion about Miyatake’s photographs of Manzanar and their importance to Asian American history.

Higa, Karin. “Hidden in Plain Sight: Little Tokyo Between the Wars.” Asian American Art: A History, 1850–1970. Ed. Gordon H. Chang, Mark Johnson, and Paul Karlstrom. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2008. Print. Discusses the art movements in Little Tokyo between World Wars I and II, including the activity of the Shakudo-sha.