Tamoto Kenzo exhibition: photographs of the Ainu of Hokkaido at the Quai Branly Museum

For many, Japan is limited to the island of Honshu and its cities mixing tradition and modernity such as Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Nagoya or Kobe. For others, Japan is much more diversified and hides many secrets. For example, do you know the Ainu?

This indigenous people is mainly established on the island of Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan, but also in the south of Sakhalin Island and Kamchatka, as well as the Kuril Islands. A people that the Japanese Tamoto Kenzō immortalized by photographing them between 1870 and 1889 on this famous island in the north of the country of the Rising Sun.

In 2022, the Quai Branly - Jacques Chirac Museum acquired an exceptional set of these photographs. They are now to be discovered in the Parisian museum during an exceptional and temporary exhibition to be seen from January 18 to May 2, 2023.

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At the beginning, nothing destined Tamoto Kenzō to realize this vast project of photographic documentation on the Ainu. Trained in medicine and chemistry in Nagasaki, Tamoto Kenzō moved to Hakodate on the island of Hokkaido in 1859. It was during this period that he decided to devote himself to photography.

His pictures, which constitute the oldest photographic reportage of this magnitude on the Ainu, are mainly taken in the village of Etomo and its surroundings. We discover portraits of these inhabitants in their environment. We also learn more about the way of life and the ritual practices of the indigenous people, who were hit by the Japanese authorities' assimilation policy.

This exhibition of rare photographs can be found in the museum's graphic arts box, located at the end of the Plateau des Collections, between the Africa and Americas zones.