Kiichi Asano

Kiichi Asano was a Japanese photographer born in 1914. He is well known for his lifelong, obsessive work on the transformation of Kyoto from a haven of Japanese tradition into a modern city. He extensively documented its old ways fading away and in the 1950’s he did some of his most celebrated works on Kyoto’s geisha and the Gion District. This photograph, ”A Rainy Commencement Ceremony”, is part of this body of work and was used as the cover of his book published in 1990: The Gion Quarter.