was a photography historian and critic, photobook collector, and curator. He also worked as a monk at the Shōgyōin () temple in the Taitō district of Tokyo while he researched the history of Japanese photography.
University days
In 1967, Kaneko entered Rissho University, where he joined the photography club, affiliated with the All Japan Students Photo Association. Told by one of his university seniors to attend a lecture that the organization was holding, Kaneko went to the lecture hall to find Tatsuo Fukushima, who had recently become the leader of the All Japan Students Photo Association. Though Fukushima’s lecture, Kaneko was exposed to works of western photographers like William Klein's Life is Good & Good for You in New York: Trance Witness Revels; Robert Frank's The Americans; and Richard Avedon's Nothing Personal; and also works of Japanese photographers like Shōmei Tōmatsu's Senryō (“Occupation"), Uchi ("Home"), and 11:02 Nagasaki, Eikoh Hosoe's Otoko to Onna (“Man and Woman”) and Bara Kei: Ordeal by Roses; and Ikkō Narahara's Human Land: Ningen no Tochi.
With other members of the All Japan Students Photo Association, Kaneko participated in many of its collective photography activities, whose goal was to cultivate culture, create a federation of photographers oriented to a common goal, and create documentation of these efforts.
One example was Hokkaido 101. The project was started in 1969, marking the 101st anniversary of the annexation of Hokkaido in 1869 after the Meiji Restoration. Some scholars say that the internal colonialism of Ezo, the former name of the Hokkaido, that displaced native Ainu peoples and was the beginning of the colonial legacy of the Japanese Empire. This differs from the standard narrative that Hokkaido was a unpeopled frontier that the Japanese developed. The goal of Hokkaido 101 was to photograph and document the what remained of the history of Japan’s internal colonialism. Although the project was never finished, it was formative to Kaneko’s decision to pursue the path of a photography historian and critic. Another example was the Pollution Campaign project that the All Japan Students Photo Association organized in 1970. Kaneko helped to organize the project and photographed pollution across Japan. The photographs taken by the group were organized and published in a photobook, Kono Chijō ni Wareware no Kuni wa Nai (“There is No Country for Us on This Earth”).
It was during his university days that Kaneko realized that he had no talent for photography and explored other methods that he could be involved with photography without directly taking photographs. This realization was the starting point for his multifaceted photography career.
The photobooks that Kaneko was exposed to while participating in the All Japan Students Photo Association inspired him to collect more. The first one he bought was Eikoh Hosoe's Otoko to Onna (“Man and Woman”) and the first foreign one was William Klein's Life is Good & Good for You in New York: Trance Witness Revels. He said that he wanted to buy more but he could not afford them, particular the foreign ones, because he was a student at the time. That is why he turned his attention to amateur photo magazines of the 1950s and 1960s. After publication of the comprehensive Nihon Shashin Shi, 1840-1945 (“A History of Japanese Photography 1840-1945”), Kaneko realized how vast the history of Japanese photography was and decided to learn about pre-war photography magazines as well. He scoured the used book districts of Kanda, Tokyo to collect these photographic records.
Post university, 1970s
After graduating from university, Kaneko went to the National Diet Library to find copies of the prewar photo magazine Photo Times, but was unsuccessful. So he went to Tokyo’s used book district in Kanda to find old photography magazines, and so began avidly collecting various photography books.