boke and Japanese aesthetics

[120]

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Did this notion of out-of-focus areas having a "quality" really come from Japan? I cannot readily trace it back to anywhere. I know about Japanese movements in blurry photography but that is something different. Any references appreciated. I am not interested in where Wikipedia thinks it comes from...

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[jdlaing]

Hokey or the actual word comes from the Japanese language and means blur. How the Japanese word got to be the definition of the out of focus area in a photograph is probably untraceable.

[asiafish]

Did this notion of out-of-focus areas having a "quality" really come from Japan? I cannot readily trace it back to anywhere. I know about Japanese movements in blurry photography but that is something different. Any references appreciated. I am not interested in where Wikipedia thinks it comes from...

 

Probably because by the time people cared about aspects of a photograph most of the cameras and lenses in use were already made in Japan.

[NB23]

Softeh

Unsharpeh

Blurreh

[Jeff S]

Michael Johnston, now editor of TOP, was the first to 'Americanize' the term by adding the 'h'.  He has written several articles explaining the background, as here...
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2009/01/what-is-bokeh.html

 

As he explains, he's tired of the sometimes controversial nature of the term, and now usually just calls it blur.

 

Jeff

Edited January 5, 2016 by Jeff S

[120]

Thank you jdlaing. Yes it's definitely a Japanese word and used for blur, e.g. motion blur in a photograph, but did the boke concept--what we mean by boke--come from Japan? Or is it a U.S. export? Its use is in the pop literature, not the scientific literature. I was expecting it to be some deep concept in Japanese art/aesthetics.

[A miller]

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My wild guess is that it has its origins in WWII...

[120]

Michael Johnston, now editor of TOP, was the first to 'Americanize' the term by adding the 'h'.  He has written several articles explaining the background, as here...

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2009/01/what-is-bokeh.html

 

As he explains, he's tired of the sometimes controversial nature of the term, and now usually just calls it blur.

 

Jeff

 

Thank you. It leaves open the possibility/likelihood this is not a Japanese concept.

[MarkP]

My wild guess is that it has its origins in WWII...

 

[carta]

As a native Japanese speaker...

 

Boke (ぼけ、ボケ、暈け) simply means blurred, out of focus, hard to see. You use it mainly for images - for example, if it is foggy outside you don't say "my sight is boke due to the fog".

(FYI, not to be confused with the same sound word boke (呆け、惚け) which roughly means stupid)

 

There isn't anything artistic about the word.

 

In photography, out of focus photos are called pin-boke (ピンボケ) which is short for "pinto ga boke teru (ピントがボケてる)"

 

"Pinto", the japanese word for "in focus area" or "focus point" is said to have come from a Dutch word.

 

I am not sure when the word "boke" was Americanized, but considering the recent trend of Japanese camera makers being used in the world, it might have been imported along with Japanese equipment.

 

FYI, Robert Capa's book "Slightly Out of Focus" is called "Chotto Pin Boke"

[120]

As a native Japanese speaker...

 

Boke (ぼけ、ボケ、暈け) simply means blurred, out of focus, hard to see. You use it mainly for images - for example, if it is foggy outside you don't say "my sight is boke due to the fog".

(FYI, not to be confused with the same sound word boke (呆け、惚け) which roughly means stupid)

 

There isn't anything artistic about the word.

 

In photography, out of focus photos are called pin-boke (ピンボケ) which is short for "pinto ga boke teru (ピントがボケてる)"

 

"Pinto", the japanese word for "in focus area" or "focus point" is said to have come from a Dutch word.

 

I am not sure when the word "boke" was Americanized, but considering the recent trend of Japanese camera makers being used in the world, it might have been imported along with Japanese equipment.

 

FYI, Robert Capa's book "Slightly Out of Focus" is called "Chotto Pin Boke"

 

 

Thank you for all the details; I defer to the native speaker.

Edited January 5, 2016 by 120

[120]

Here is a quote from Van Walree, who is much quoted here: "the blur characteristics mattered to certain Japanese photographers who used the word 'boke' to describe the aesthetic quality of the blur. The term was introduced to a larger audience through an American photo magazine in 1997." Begs the question, if they used the word "boke" for boke, what did they use for blur?

[120]

Michael Johnston, now editor of TOP, was the first to 'Americanize' the term by adding the 'h'.  He has written several articles explaining the background, as here...

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2009/01/what-is-bokeh.html

 

As he explains, he's tired of the sometimes controversial nature of the term, and now usually just calls it blur.

 

Jeff

 

Well I think that is stupid to Japanize something that is not Japanese. Thanks all, I am gratified for the answers.

[jaapv]

"Pinto", the japanese word for "in focus area" or "focus point" is said to have come from a Dutch word.

Probably "punt" which means "point", "dot" or "peak" .

[250swb]

Background 'blur' has been a concept in art for hundreds of years, in many ways since perspective was formalised as a painting technique. Not painting the background with as much detail as the foreground brings out the foreground and adds importance to it. It is the 3D effect in art. Photography by the nature of the equipment has this effect built in, and until relatively recently it had to be described in technical ways that were hard on the ear to artist photographers who just wanted to describe the 'blur' the viewer was seeing. So I think it is entirely appropriate to use bokeh for a feature that encompasses the intangible human element beyond technical considerations. Just as the word isn't perfectly understood neither is the thing itself (the blur) when related to how it enhances or detracts from a photograph.

 

 

Steve

[@McLeica]

Softeh

Unsharpeh

Blurreh

 

Outoffokeh.

[jaapv]

250swb, on 05 Jan 2016 - 09:10, said:

Background 'blur' has been a concept in art for hundreds of years, in many ways since perspective was formalised as a painting technique. Not painting the background with as much detail as the foreground brings out the foreground and adds importance to it. It is the 3D effect in art.

 

Steve

I would say, since painters started using a camera obscura with lens. (around 1575)

[earleygallery]

I would say, since painters started using a camera obscura with lens. (around 1575)

 

Possibly much earlier than that;

 

In the 5th century BC, the Mohist philosopher Mozi (墨子) in ancient China mentioned the effect of an inverted image forming through a pinhole.^[3] The image of an inverted Chinese pagoda is mentioned in Duan Chengshi's (d. 863) book Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang written during the Tang Dynasty (618–907).^[4] Along with experimenting with the pinhole camera and the burning mirror of the ancient Mohists, the Song Dynasty (960–1279 CE) Chinese scientist Shen Kuo (1031–1095) experimented with the camera obscura and was the first to establish geometrical and quantitative attributes for it.^[4]

The Greek philosopher Aristotle observed the phenomenon in the fourth century BC. In his book Problems, he wrote:

"Why is it that when the sun passes through quadri-laterals, as for instance in wickerwork, it does not produce a figure rectangular in shape but circular?” and further "Why is it that an eclipse of the sun, if one looks at it through a sieve or through leaves, such as a plane-tree or other broadleaved tree, or if one joins the fingers of one hand over the fingers of the other, the rays are crescent-shaped where they reach the earth? Is it for the same reason as that when light shines through a rectangular peep-hole, it appears circular in the form of a cone?”

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica M

[jaapv]

One would need a lensed Camera Obscura. Giambattista della Porta was the first to use a lens in the middle sixteenth century.

The pinhole Camera Obscura, as you point out, is much older but exhibits an infinite DOF.

 

There are even suggestions that the principle was used in Palaeolithic cave paintings.

 

http://www.scientificjournals.org/Journals2011/articles/1515.pdf

[Peter H]

Sfumato, meaning something very similar to "bokeh" I think, was used to great effect by Leonardo and others.

 

It is not a new idea, or in my opinion exclusively related to optical qualities of lenses when used in an artistic or creative sense.

Edited January 5, 2016 by Peter H