Topics Databasing of Color Photographs of West Asia, North Africa and the Mediterranean Countries taken by MUTAGUCHI Yoshiro in the 1950s and 60s

This 2020 IRC project digitized about 4400 color photographs of West Asia, North Africa, and the Mediterranean countries taken by the late Mr. MUTAGUCHI Yoshiro, and published an online resource “Databasing of Color Photographs of West Asia, North Africa and the Mediterranean Countries taken by MUTAGUCHI Yoshiro in the 1950s and 60s” in March 2021. This resource makes it possible to browse the photographs by date and by region.

Mr. MUTAGUCHI Yoshiro went to take charge of a correspondent of the Asahi Shimbun in Cairo, Egypt in 1959, and served as Paris Bureau Chief in France after that. Thereafter he had a post in Seikei University as a researcher, and was consecutively the third chairman of Collegium Mediterranistarum, the director of the Middle Eastern Culture Center in Japan, etc. He covered stories about all Middle Eastern countries including Afghanistan in the days of being a reporter of the Asahi Shimbun. For many countries, he was the first Japanese journalist who visited them.

Mr. Mutaguchi took photographs of the places, all of which it used to be difficult for people excepting journalists to come close up to and Japanese have rarely visited at that time. Therefore, photographs he took attracted people’s attention as precious materials and many photographic collections were published by several publishers after his return to Japan. He also left thousands of 35mm color slides (positives) as his personal legacy, and we made this database because property rights and copyrights of these slides are transferred to ILCAA in 2020.

(Written by Masato IIZUKA and Mayumi ADACHI)

• 2020 End-of-year report
  Databasing of Color Photographs of West Asia, North Africa and the Mediterranean Countries taken by MUTAGUCHI Yoshiro in the 1950s and 60s