Hideo Haga


Hideo Haga[] was a Japanese photographer, known for his photography of traditional Japanese festivals and folk culture.

Biography

Hideo Haga was born in Dalian, Manchuria on 10 September 1921. He took up the camera as a child, encouraged by his father, an engineer whose hobby was photography.
In 1941 he enrolled at Keio University, as a Literature major, where Haga also joined the camera club, often to the neglect of his studies. Lectures by the folklorist Shinobu Orikuchi, which he joined when he heard that credits were offered to anybody for attendance, were a strong influence on his future interests.
Haga graduated with a degree in literature in 1944. During the war he was recruited to make aerial photographs for the navy, and in 1946 found employment with the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone company. Retrenched, he returned to live with his father and started to devote himself to photography of traditional culture. Heibonsha publishers issued his first book, on the Japanese rice festival, in 1959. A further thirty-five #books followed.
Haga Library Co., which he established in 1985 markets Haga's over 300 thousand stock photos, made over sixty years, of festivals and folk culture in Japan and other countries.
Haga died on 12 November 2022, at the age of 101.

Career and recognition

In 1950 Haga was one of the founders of the Japan Professional Photographers Society of which he became chairman for seven years in 1981.
In 1955 a photograph of a heavily pregnant woman against a blurred street scene by Hideo Haga was selected, for its unusual public perspective on pregnancy, by Edward Steichen for MoMA’s The Family of Man exhibition which was seen by nine million people as it toured thirty-seven countries.
Haga was the producer for the Festival Plaza at Expo '70 in Osaka.
His book, Folk Customs of Japan - Festivals & Performing Arts, shows his photographs in monochrome of festivals taken throughout Japan since the 1950s.

Books

  • "Ta no kami: Nihon no inasaku girei = The rituals of rice production in Japan". Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1959.
  • "Kamisama-tachi no kisetsu", Kadokawa Shoten, 1964. The seasons of the gods.
  • "Japanese folk festivals illustrated by Hideo Haga". Tokyo: Asahi Optical Co., 1970. Reprint, 1983.
  • "La fiesta: all the world loves a festival", : Genkosha, 1989.
Traditional daily lives along the Japanese Archipelago series, Komine Shoten.,. 7 volumes chiefly color illustrations.
  • "Nihon no matsuri jiten". Tokyo: Chōbunsha, 2008.
  • "Origichi Shinobu to kodai wo tabiyuku". Tokyo: Keio University Press, 2009.
  • "Miyamoto Tsuneichi to Haga Hideo ga aruita kyushu: showa 37-nen". Miyamoto, Tsuneichi; Haga, Hideo; Morimoto, Takashi. Tokyo: Mizunowa Shuppan, 2011,,.

Awards