- Tamotsu Yatō
was a Japanese photographer and occasional actor responsible for pioneering Japanese homoerotic photography and creating iconic
black-and-white images of the Japanese male. He was a friend and collaborator of the writerYukio Mishima and the film criticDonald Richie , as well as a long-term romantic partner [Donald Richie, "The Japan Journals: 1947-2004"; Jeffrey Angles, interview with Takahashi Mutsuo.] ofMeredith Weatherby , an expatriate American publisher and translator of Mishima's works into English. Yato completed three volumes of photography.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 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 ofNippon !"Books by Tamotsu Yato
*"Taidō: Nihon no bodibirudā-tachi" (nihongo2|体道：日本のボディビルダーたち). Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1966; English version: "Young Samurai: Bodybuilders of Japan", New York: Grove Press, 1967. With an introduction by
Yukio Mishima .
*"Hadaka matsuri" (nihongo2|裸祭り). Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppansha, 1969; English version: "Naked festival: A Photo-Essay", New York/Tokyo: John Weatherhill, 1968. With an introduction byYukio Mishima and essays by Tatsuo Hagiwara, Mutsuro Takahashi, and Kozo Yamaji. Translated and adapted for Western readers byMeredith Weatherby and Sachiko Teshima.
*"Otoko: Photo-Studies of the Young Japanese Male", Los Angeles: Rho-Delta Press, 1972. Dedicated to the memory ofYukio Mishima .Notes
ee also
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Homosexuality in Japan References
*Angles, Jeffrey. [http://wwwsshe.murdoch.edu.au/intersections/issue12/takahashi_interview.html 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 contexts [http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=Na50ZUnMgNEC (browsable scanned version at GoogleBooks)]
*Richie, Donald. "Naked Festival: The Art of Tamotsu Yato", Kyoto Journal no. 44, Kyoto / New York, 2000.
*Tagame, Gengoroh. [http://www.pot.co.jp/pub_list/pub_book/images/geiero2_001-032_mihon.pdf Gay Erotic Art in Japan vol. 2: Transitions of Gay Fantasy in the Times] (PDF file)
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