Nineteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

This paper considers the 1960s-era photography of the disabled photographer Gochō Shigeo (1946-1983) relative to the hierarchies and biases of period Japanese culture. It shows that values and expected behaviours of the time excluded photographers with disabilities. Contemporary writing on Gochō reflects this bias. It portrays him as a tragic figure for whom photography provided a means of exploring his disability-conditioned identity through photographic encounters with non-disabled others. I revise this interpretation by presenting Gochō as a pivotal figure in the post-1960s shift from doctrinaire social realist photography to more pluralistic modes of documentary representation. His photographs propound that public participation can take quieter, more discreet forms than the spectacular ‘big politics’ that dominate the news. Such activity is embedded in the everyday and characterized by a citizenship ethos that is comparatively tranquil, tolerant, and good-natured. In Gochō’s photographs, governments and their agencies, capitalist entities, political parties, unions, student organizations, the military, and the police are displaced as the institutions defining political inclusion and participation. When they intrude into the ordinary lives of the subjects he depicts, it is indirectly and peripherally. As theorized by Maurice Blanchot, the everyday’s small, routine, seemingly inconsequential actions evade systems of representation, regulation, and repression, serving as agents of disorder. This whiff of disorder made Gochō’s photographs threatening to Japan’s photographic establishment and appealing to subsequent photographers, who likewise challenged social strictures on access, inclusion, and participation in Japan.