Brings up many questions about archival practices/ institutional validation: Japanese museums were late to collect photographs and later to acknowledge work by women. As far as I know, the first solo show by a woman at TOP was Ishiuchi Miyako's "Mother's" (2006) #東京都写真美術館
These institutions categorize photographers who primarily made a living through commercial work (studio photography, advertising, etc.) as not as collectible as those who also did commercial work to pay the bills alongside while doing "avant garde" photography.
The denial of studio photography, which was probably the most significant way that the average person in Japan had contact with photography prior to 1960, also means writing out the social networks and intimate forms of education that photographers like Yamazawa built.
Such as the studios Yamazawa staffed with only women who, like Saiki Sachiko 斎木幸子 (pictured working in Yamazawa's studio in 1940), went on to open her own portrait studio in the late 1940s and is still in operation today. 
Unsurprisingly, focus on male photographer lineages has no room for the Yamazawa Photography Research Group (山沢写真研究会) which in the 1950s created a model of photo education that did not rely on sponsorship by newspapers or camera companies or long years of indentured labor.
Currently working to intervene in this historical narrative and very interesting in hearing from others working on similar issues #feministhistory #womenphotographers
