The Ashiya Camera Club (ACC) was established in 1930 by Iwata Nakayama, Kanbei Hanaya, and Kichinosuke Beniya, Juzo Matsubara, Seiji Korai, and other amateur photographers in Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan.
[1] In 1930 the Ashiya Camera Club was founded by Hanaya Kambei,[2] Nakayama Iwata,[3][4] Benitani Kichinosuke, and Korai Seiji.
They supported avant-garde creative tendencies including the Japanese "New Photography" movement, Shinko Shashin.
The German Film und Foto exhibition was presented by The Asahi Shimbun in Tokyo in 1931 and was hailed as one of the shows that introduced European New Photography movements to Japan.
They also held the Ashiya Photography Salon which was an annual exhibition one to nationwide submissions in 1935 but was discontinued after the fifth exhibition in 1940 due to the changing societal atmosphere as the government clamped down on expressions that were deemed subversive in the years leading up WWII.