Yōnosuke Natori

Yōnosuke Natori (名取 洋之助 Natori Yōnosuke, September 3, 1910 - November 23, 1962) was a Japanese photographer and editor.

Biography

Born in Tokyo on 3 September 1910, Natori studied at Keio normal school but upon graduation went with his mother to Munich, where he studied at a school of arts and crafts. He became interested in photography and in 1931 obtained a Leica.

Later in 1931 he got a contract to work as a photographer for Ullstein, which in 1933 sent him to Manchuria to cover the Mukden Incident. After immediate hostilities there had ended, Natori went to Japan and set up the first Nihon Kōbō. When that collapsed he set up the second, working on its magazine Nippon. He went to Berlin for the 1936 Olympics, and thence went directly to the US. Some of the photographs he took while in the US were published by Life and in 1937 he became the first Japanese photographer to be contracted to that magazine. Natori returned to Japan and Japanese-held China, and worked through the wartime years on various Japanese propaganda organs, such as Shanghai and Canton.

In 1947, Natori set up Shūkan San Nyūsu (Weekly Sun News), inspired by Life and similar western magazines (though published on inferior paper). This ended two years later, whereupon Natori edited and also did photography for Iwanami Shashin Bunko (1950–59). He was busy in the fifties and made a number of trips outside Japan: to China in 1956, and to Europe every year from 1959 to 1962. Toward the end of this period he photographed romanesque sculpture and architecture.

Natori died in Tokyo on 23 November 1962.

Books by Natori and of Natori's works

Books about Natori

Other books with works by Natori

References