About fifteen minutes from Palaceside Building, behind the British Embassy in Ichibancho, Chiyoda, is a museum where you meet the Showa era: the Japan Camera Museum. A museum on a building’s first basement is unusual enough; it holds more than ten thousand cameras from Japan and abroad, from famous machines to rarities. I peeked in on a lunchtime walk. The main photo is the entrance; the right photo is the interior through glass. (Photography after you enter is forbidden.)
The world is digital; this year compact and mirrorless cameras have both lost market to ever-stronger smartphones, while DSLR digital cameras have reportedly grown about 50 percent on average. In this museum, of course, analog film cameras dominate.
The world’s first commercial camera, the Giroux Daguerreotype, can be seen in Japan only here; the label said 1839 (Tenpo 10). Collapsible wooden-box cameras and costly cameras from Taisho through early Showa (before 1945) are interesting too, but postwar cameras, grouped by period, read as a history of Japanese industry. A rangefinder from the year I was born was in the line as well.
Exploded parts displays of Nikon, Canon, and other makers’ SLRs make you drool. Six hundred fifty to 850 pieces laid out at a glance — astonishing that 850 parts are packed in one SLR.
A curiosity: the Zippo-lighter-shaped “Echo 8” used as a stylish prop in Roman Holiday, for which newcomer Audrey Hepburn won Best Actress — photo below, from a fan site. Echo 8 was made by Japan’s Suzuki Kogaku, a 6×6 mm, 20-exposure still camera using 8 mm film. 8 mm film is hard to get now, and shooting “while lighting a cigarette” is hard in another sense too.
There are permanent and special shows. Through October 20 the special is “Understand the Camera,” with cut models split to show insides and transparent skeleton models (promo pieces that cannot shoot) so you see how photos work. From October 29, “The LEICA — 100 Years of Leica” gathers from the 1923 Leica 0 and also introduces Leica’s ties with Japan.
Japan Camera Museum is in JCII Ichibancho Building, 25 Ichibancho, Chiyoda; closed Mondays; general admission 300 yen.