Top 6 Japanese Food Photographers to Know

Date: 22.04.2016
Country: Japan
Tags: food, food photography, Japanese food photography

Japan has a way of turning the everyday act of eating into something quietly artful, and its photographers are among the best in the world at capturing it. We’ve rounded up six Japanese food photographers whose work spans everything from playful miniature worlds to documentary-style portraits of the people behind the plate — each with a distinct voice and a portfolio worth lingering over.

Akiko Ida

Akiko Ida is a Japanese-born food photographer based in Paris. Her work appears in cookbooks, magazines and advertising campaigns across Europe and beyond. But she is best known for Minimiam, the long-running series she creates with her husband, photographer Pierre Javelle. The couple met while studying photography in Paris and have been building Minimiam since 2002 — a name that blends “miniature” with miam, the French word for “yummy”. In it, tiny model figures garden, picnic and scramble across oversized plates, turning a bowl of berries into a landscape and a tart into a construction site. It’s whimsical on the surface and demanding underneath — equal parts food photography and miniature diorama. See more at akikoida.com.

Minimiam by Akiko Ida and Pierre Javelle

Keiko Oikawa

Keiko Oikawa is a Japanese photographer and food stylist based in the United Kingdom. Her signature is a bright, airy aesthetic — soft daylight, restrained styling and plenty of negative space — that has made her a favourite for cookbook and editorial clients who want food to read as fresh rather than fussy. That lightness is harder than it looks; it’s as much a study in restraint as in technique. Explore her work at keikooikawa.com.

Ito Takaaki

Ito Takaaki is a member of Eat Photo, a Tokyo-based collective of food-photography specialists. The group works across the full spectrum of food imagery — advertising shoots, editorial features and restaurant menu photography — and Ito’s gallery shows why they’re trusted with it. His frames are clean and precise, letting the dish carry the image without visual clutter. See more at takaakiito.format.com.

Kimura Bungo

Kimura Bungo (Bungo Kimura) is a Tokyo-based photographer and visual director who describes himself as a “food-culture photographer”. Rather than stopping at the plate, he shoots the vessels, the seasons and the people whose work brings a dish to the table. He studied art history and philosophy before moving from documentary production into photography in 2003, and that background shows — his images read as storytelling, not just styling. Vegetables, meat and wine are recurring subjects, and he is also a member of Eat Photo. See more at kimurabungo.jp.

Koji Hanabuchi

Koji Hanabuchi is the third member of Eat Photo, working out of Shibuya, Tokyo. He specialises in food and beverage photography, but his portfolio spills into music and nature subjects too — a breadth that gives his food work an easy, observational quality rather than a rigid studio feel. See his gallery on Eat Photo.

Junichi Miyazaki

Junichi Miyazaki is a freelance food photographer based between Nagano and Tokyo. His work sits at the intersection of food, nature and lifestyle, and it’s built on a genuinely unusual foundation: he has travelled Japan visiting more than 500 food producers across all 47 prefectures. That producer-first approach earned him second prize in the 2018 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards for Best Photography, with credits ranging from Lonely Planet’s From the Source (Japan) to Godiva, JAL and Meiji. See his portfolio at junichimiyazaki.com.