Prologue

The Japanese love to take their children on excursions--or at least they started to resume the habit in the late Occupation period when I took the pictures in this portfolio. The pictures have other implications: there is evidence in them that fathers are taking a more active role with young children, and there is also evidence that the children themselves are more adventurous. However, there remains the tendency for older siblings to take charge of younger.

families gathered in an urban park

44. Family Pictures
Family photography in a small park operated by a department store in an outlying area of Tokyo. The photography explosion that took place in the late Occupation period first hit Japan; then the new cameras with their superb lenses went into export market. This picture, in fact, was taken with my new Nikon Model S camera--the same camera and lens that David Douglas Duncan used somewhat later to photograph the Korean War.

families sitting on benches in the park

45. Families at the Zoo
Families gathering in the Ueno Park Zoo, snacking and resting. The woman on the left is wearing a regular wartime period kimono and haori costume. The husband is eating his boxed o-bento with hashi (chopsticks).

a baby sleeps in a pouch on her mother's back

46. A Family at the Zoo
A young postwar family at the Ueno Park Zoo. The father wears the standard "salaryman" costume of postwar Tokyo business offices. Mother is carrying her child on her back, in a pouch--a custom followed in Japan for a long time.

a mother with a baby on her back emerges from a doorway with several kids walking behind her

47. Entrance and Ticket Booth at Tamagawa Children's Park
The entrance styles at the Tamagawa Children's amusement park, near Tamagawa River, in the west end of the metropolitan Tokyo region. Note papa carrying his son on his shoulders: and mama with her baby on her back under her neneko banten, a special short coat designed to protect the baby. After the war, many Japanese urban fathers responded to "demokurashii" and gender equality to cease their erring and wandering ways, and become family men.

a mother supports her child on toy horse

48. Sisters at the Tamagawa Children's Park
Older sister, in her "middy" school uniform, assisting her toddler sister ride a "horse" in the children's amusement park in the Tamagawa district.

young boy orders a ticket from a kiosk; a woman stands behind him

49. Children at Tamagawa Park
Here the young son is allowed to negotiate the purchase of a ticket on his own, while his aunt stands aside and carefully watches.

a woman crouches with a baby in a pouch on her back

50. Street Entertainment: Ueno Park
A young mother, with her child on her back, watching a street peddler and entertainer, manipulate an exhibit with caged performing mice. The walkways in the big city parks had many such little shows for the kiddies.

The partial image of a boy at the right is, I believe, a picture of John M. Bennett, age six, now a poet and librarian of special collections at Ohio State University!

an old man with a puppet on his right hand

51. A Street Peddler in Ueno Park
Another peddler-entertainer, with puppet dolls representing well-known figures in folk-comedy skits.

2 american soldiers stand in a park with a young Japanese woman

52. GIs and their Girlfriends in the Park
The GIs, their teen-age girl friend, and her little brother barely seen below, at left, in the amusement park. Note both men are sergeants--higher ranking enlisted men usually had the best girls, and many of them became fixtures in the girls' families, providing them with cigarettes, snacks, cosmetics etc., all purchased at the Tokyo PX. American GIs, while paid very little, nevertheless were rich men in a society that was still very impoverished.