Photo Japan was founded in 1984 in Kyoto, Japan by Kenneth Hamm. A year later the company officially entered the stock photography business with its first photo sale...the cover of a local magazine called Kansai Time Out . In 1986 the office moved to Vashon Island, Washington, USA, a rural community just outside the city of Seattle. Kenneth Hamm is the chief business operator and photographer. Our staff includes a native Japanese for research and language support. Since establishing a presence on the Internet in July of 1997, Photo Japan continues to deliver quality images to creatives and professionals the world over.

When photo buyers head out onto the World Wide Web in search of images of Japan, the first place they will go to is photojapan.com.  They will quickly realize we have the largest and most diverse collection of images on the subject.  Along with our genuine, person-to-person customer service and quick delivery times, there will be no need to venture elsewhere.

Our effort from day-one has been to provide a diverse collection of professional-quality photos of Japan to businesses worldwide at affordable prices. Our rights-managed Licensing Agreement enables us to deliver images tailored specifically to project needs and budgets. For those wishing to streamline their expenses even further, we now offer a select group of images at fixed-rate, royalty-free prices.

Focusing our efforts exclusively on images of Japan benefits our photo buyers with the best possible product and service. Aside from living in Japan for a number of years and making frequent trips there to refresh our stock, we supplement our photo services with an extensive knowledge of the culture.

With every trip to Japan our photo archive grows.  It is our goal is to make the entire photo library of 100,000 plus images available to photo buyers through our on-line search.  Processing and keywording such a quantity of image files is a monumental task, but we are making steady progress toward this goal.

Photo Japan images have appeared in books, magazines and advertisements as well as on television, the Internet and consumer products all around the globe.  To see samples of published photos and a partial client list, please visit our Sample Tear Sheets page.