KAGE - 'Shadow'

"Japanese photographers have created a tradition strikingly different from that of their Western counterparts. Their work is based on ideas, rules, and aesthetics that are specific to Japanese culture but often little known in the West."
Anne W Tucker
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When photography was introduced in Japan during the Meiji-Restoration, the description and naming of photographs and photography, at that time, maybe reveal (about) how they were comprehended:

In-ei-kyoo (a mirror that marks shadows) and Ryu-ei kyoo (a mirror that stops shadows) and that the Japanese word for shadow is KAGE, which also signifies portrait.

In the Japanese worldview, people's form in this world is not real, but only a shadow.
This implies that life in its essence is seen as transient, where nothing lasts, nothing
is finished, nothing is perfect, ("Three marks of existence") and that reality is the illusion that we create as we pass by.

The concept of impermanence/unfinished in Japan, which is at the root of their aesthetic, like in the tea ceremony and other arts, is clear evidence of their different
art-making methods.
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"You will always exist in the universe in one form or another".
Shunryu Suzuki