Like many Japanese students his age, he was sent to work at a steel factory and underwent incessant conditioning intended to instill fear and hatred towards the British and Americans.
[6] Once the war ended and Allied troops took over numerous Japanese cities, Tōmatsu interacted with Americans firsthand and found that his preconceptions of them were not entirely salient.
At the time Tōmatsu's contempt for the violence and crimes committed by these soldiers was complicated by individual acts of kindness he received from them – he simultaneously loved and hated their presence.
While still in university, his photographs were shown frequently in monthly amateur competitions by Camera magazine and received recognition from Ihei Kimura and Ken Domon.
[15] Tōmatsu's artistic output and renown grew significantly during the 1960s, exemplified by his prolific engagements with many prominent Japanese photography magazines.
[16] In contrast to his earlier style which resembled traditional photojournalism, Tōmatsu was beginning to develop a highly expressionistic form of image taking that emphasized the photographer's own subjectivity.
KEN addressed concerns over a growing fascist tendency in Japan and expressed criticisms about the 1970 World Fair held in Osaka.
[25] Essays, both textual and visual, were contributed by Provoke members and other prominent Japanese photographers including Masahisa Fukase and Kazuo Kitai.
[25] Tōmatsu's early efforts to promote photography in his home country, such as the launch of VIVO or his work as a professor at Tama Art Academy (1965) and Tokyo Zokei University (1966–1973),[16] led to his role as an exhibition organizer for the influential show, Shashin hyakunen: Nihonjin ni yoru shashin hyōgen no rekishi (写真100年 日本人による写真表現の歴史, A Century of Photography: A Historical Exhibition of Photographic Expression by the Japanese).
Although he had come to Okinawa in order to witness its return to Japanese territory, Pencil of the Sun revealed a considerable shift away from the subject of military bases that he pursued throughout 1960s.
[31] Tōmatsu took part in his first major international show, New Japanese Photography (1974) at MoMA New York, alongside workshop members Hosoe, Moriyama, Fukase, and 11 other photographers.
By 1980, Tōmatsu published three more books: Scarlet Dappled Flower (1976) and The Shining Wind (1979) were composed of his images from Okinawa; and Kingdom of Mud (1978) featured his Afghanistan series printed earlier in Assalamu Alaykum.
[35] [36] While in Chiba, he roamed the beaches near his home and photographed the debris that washed up onto on the black sand shores; the resulting photo series was titled Plastics.
[16] Tomatsu notes how his surgery shifted his interest in the question of survival and mortality,[37] with Plastics[37] and Sakura[38] demonstrating his increasingly allusive approach towards these themes.
Skin of the Nation was organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and curated by Sandra S. Phillips and the photographer and writer Leo Rubinfien.