Ari in New Zealand posted this response to my post about Yoshiko Fujita:
What is the deal with so many photographers over there not bothering with internet sites? If I had to take a guess I’d say it’s maybe because of all the small self-run galleries, so photographers can potentially get exposure that way where they couldn’t in other parts of the world. Or is it Jun Abe’s policy? But it does seem kind of weird by today’s standards.
I’ll take a quick stab at answering this question. The short answer, of course, is that “there are a few reasons.” In particular…
Communication. This is a combination of the language barrier, plus a different usage of social networks (which also has to do with the language barrier). More and more Japanese photographers are starting to use Facebook, which will help, especially if they can muster the courage to post with even the most minimal level of English. Some people have websites but you can’t find (let alone read) them. It’s shocking to me how many actually really good websites are out there, and even have an English version, but haven’t made the slightest effort to promote themselves to a foreign audience! Parapera and spacecadet.jp come to mind.
No interest, or awareness of reaching an online audience. A lot can actually be accomplished without a website here, just by meeting people. I don’t think it’s viewed as particularly unprofessional to not have a website, either. Apart from that, I think a lot of people might have never even considered reaching an audience outside of Japan. Whether this is a kind of psychological, self-defeating attitude or just simply not caring, I’m not sure. It’s strange to think of in today’s Tumblrized world, but I don’t know of too many Japanese photo students who have a good website. (I’m starting to look harder.)
The Japanese internet is different than the Western internet. Technically, of course, this is not true, but many people point to the fast development of cell phone technology in Japan as a reason that the terrestrial internet has lagged behind. Basically this story goes that, because Japanese people could surf a miniaturized version of the internet on their cellphones in the mid-90s, the development of the full-screen web experience was stunted. Compare the websites of Japan’s Bic Camera with B&H and you can see this in practice.
I’m sure there are some others, and this is a huge question which I can already see branching out to include other topics like social networks, etc. In any case, it’s definitely not a “policy” of Abe’s, I’m guessing the thought of creating a website has literally never crossed his mind. If I think of more stuff I’ll add it here, if anyone has any other thoughts let me know.
Even before “smartphones”, it did seem as if more people under 40 were accessing the web in their free time via cellphones than via computers. If you’re a photographer, why bother either to create a site that can’t be read by most people or to create one with minuscule graphics? (But now that more and more people are using Iphones or better, this may change.)
Yes, Facebook seems enormous in Japan. (But I wouldn’t know for sure: all its invitations to become this or that customer’s “friend” are now deleted as spam without my ever seeing them.)
Often when a photobook is bilingual, the publisher puts no effort into marketing it outside Japan. This arouses the suspicion that the second language (virtually always English) is not for the benefit of people who can read it more easily than they can read Japanese, but instead for decoration, in order to look good to a certain Japanese demographic. (Consider the wide use of snippets of quasi-English in roman letters within Japanese corporate websites, etc.)
I get the impression that Japanese people, particularly younger Japanese people, have an ever decreasing interest in the outside world, or anyway the world west of China. Vacations in South Korea, Vietnam, etc may still be popular, but north America and west Europe (let alone more exotic destinations) much less so. Much lip-service is paid to “international” this and that, but lip-service is all it is; the content of Japanese teevee and magazines is as relentlessly Japanese as it was decades ago, perhaps more so; a summer vacation is better spent eating, drinking and websurfing within Japan than encountering people who may be unlike you and your friends. How many Japanese photo students want either to see non-Japanese work that hasn’t already been introduced in Japanese, or to show their own work to people outside Japan? Not all that many, I (somewhat impertinently) venture to guess.