[adjusting] the deformation of the curve". This exaggerated the convexity of the horizon, but Shiotani's manipulations continued: he bleached part of the sky area to emphasize the clouds, applied soot and oils to darken areas, and used an ink eraser to emphasize the white of the waves. The photograph was submitted for a contest in the January 1932 issue of The Photo-Times; it won first prize, but only after the magazine's critic, Sakae Tamura, had said that it was unsatisfactory as submitted and had had its left and right edges trimmed. View with Weather Forecast is not unusual in Shiotani's oeuvre in its altered proportions. View with a Tunnel (Tonneru no aru fūkei) of 1930 is known both with horizontal compression (as shown here) and without. Although it has a "pastoral atmosphere" without the compression, one has "a sense of unease" when viewing the compressed version. Alterations such as those used by Shiotani were widely used by the Surrealists for a disorienting effect, and Takeuji surmises from this and from Shiotani's occasional photography of cemeteries and human bones that he may have been an early exponent of Surrealism in Japanese photography, although Surrealism in the visual arts was little known in Japan until later (1937) and the degree of Shiotani's awareness of Surrealist trends overseas is unknown. Shiotani regarded himself as lucky to live in the provincial area of San'in, with its sea, sand dunes, rivers, Mt. Daisen and Mt. Senjō. Moreover, it had become an area of photographic excellence and experimentation. Younger photographers from the area followed in Shiotani's footsteps: most notably Yasuo Iwasa (), and a little later Shōji Ueda, who went on to enjoy great success. Among the legends about Shiotani was that he was such a perfectionist that retouching just two square centimetres of a print could occupy him for a whole day. Ueda stated that Shiotani's rate of success in contests and his skills made him something like a god. Withdrawal Shiotani gradually reduced his participation in photography at the national level during the 1930s. The last appearances of his photographs in Asahi Camera and The Photo-Times were in the October 1932 and June 1934 issues respectively. A series of twelve articles by him on techniques for The Photo-Times ended in September 1935. Takeuji surmises that this gradual withdrawal was because his geijutsu photography was becoming eclipsed by the newer trend of more expressly modernist