Confessing Unrepresentability: Photography and Panoramic Depiction in Tayama Katai’s Russo-Japanese War Diary

Abstract

This article examines Tayama Katai’s (1872–1930) war diary Dainigun jūsei nikki (Diary of the Second Army going to war, 1905) to elucidate the relation between photography and the panoramic depiction in his writing on the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905). Concretely, it focuses on Katai’s effort to depict war through panoramic views informed by photography. I argue that Katai’s experience of failing to deliver an objective and realistic description of war contributed to his notion of realism and a quasi-confessional style in his subsequent works.</p