Attracted by the beauty of the mountains and the Inland Sea of his home
town, young Maitani tried to preserve it in his sketch book.
Later, he continued to capture this beauty through photography by using his own hand-made box camera. He was ten years old then.
The boy made a darkroom out of a black curtain and learned film development by himself.
In a summer vacation, Maitani
was taking a photography diary with his father's Rolleiflex
in secret. When his father found out the diary, he gave Maitani a Togo
camera, an inexpensive toy camera for kids.
From the second half of middle school years to high school, Maitani was completely absorbed into photography. He was a member of a school photography club, his camera was a Leica IIIf camera.
Maitani was a very skillful photographer and frequently won awards in magazine photography contests. He even found fault with camera design and submitted his own designs to magazines. He held 4 design patents when he was 16 years old.
When Maitani was in the university, he was influenced by professor Torajirou Watanabe. Professor Watanabe once told Maitani : "What your job is, is to find out where the problem lies." This became a guiding light in Maitani’s thinking.
