Japanese haiku is the literary form that most resembles a photograph. The 17 syllables of the poem, and the two or three elements they reference, are taken in virtually at a glance. The elements are not allegorical or even metaphoric, but function more as metonymy or synecdoche, parts of a cultural whole. They have deep resonance in themselves but their poetic significance is in their juxtaposition. The photographs of Shomei Tomatsu in “Skin of a Nation,” the exhibition now at the Japan Society, are like that. They are further like haiku in that they generally lack narrative.

“Untitled,” (Hateruma-jima, Okinawa) from the series “The Pencil of the Sun” (1971), is a perfect example of this. It is an image of sea and sky. The camera is close to the water, so we see the little swells and ripples and the play of light on the surface. The sky in this black-and-white picture is light on the horizon and gets progressively darker higher up. There is a lovely puff of a cloud left of center, interesting but not overly dramatic.

What makes this picture of commonplace parts a work by Mr. Tomatsu and not someone else is the slope of the horizon, declining from left to right. The tilt suggests the photographer might be on a rocking boat, but it also gives the water the aspect of a hill, as if it might be land. And if the horizon is not stable, and a cloud, we know, is constantly changing shape, how secure can we be? This sweet picture is fraught with existential crackle. Like the best haiku, it is simple, exquisite, and portent with – “meaning” is too Western a word. Whatever it is portent with is more elusive than mere meaning.

Most of the pictures in the exhibit are labeled “Untitled.” Mr. Tomatsu insisted on this, and though it greatly complicates the business of discussing them in print, he must have his reasons. I expect it is another way of emphasizing the autonomy of the image: The picture is what it is; you have license to see in it what you will.

Shomei Tomatsu was born in 1930 and first came to prominence by winning several of the photographic competitions open to amateurs (these were an important part of the development of postwar Japanese photography). The social, political, economic, and cultural disarray of this period was a proving ground for many talented photographers, but in the succeeding decades Mr. Tomatsu came to be regarded as the first among his peers. As the defeated, traditional, and fascistic Japan evolved into the confident, hip, economic powerhouse of today, he created a great visual record of what was being lost and what was becoming. His country’s relationship with America – envy, fear, admiration, loathing, emulation, hatred – has been a major part of his work.

Like so much of Japanese culture for the last century and a half, Mr. Tomatsu’s photography recapitulates contemporaneous developments in the West, but is buttressed by elements from indigenous sources. Attention to the texture of surfaces is one of these. The mud that covers everything in the picture of a boot, “Untitled (Nagoya)” from the series “Floods and the Japanese” (1959) is alive with the shimmer of light. The glistening black of a drain in print 26 and the slightly uneven weave of the tatami mats in print 24, both from the series “Home”; the skin under the white makeup of an aging street performer in print 71 from the series “Chindon”; the patterning of the cyclone fences in print 43 from the series “Chewing Gum and Chocolate” (1960); the palpable presence of the keloid scar tissue in the pictures of victims of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki and the fascination with the most minute details of the glass bottles deformed by the blast – all these are taken note of in a culture fascinated by the smoothness of silk and the grittiness of certain ceramics.

One of the central teachings of Buddhism is mutability, the notion that all the things of this world are constantly changing into other things. (Photography might seem to be a stay against this, in that it fixes a moment in time, but pictures, too, decay.) Mr. Tomatsu understands this in a profound way. He is the archetypical Japanese photographer, with his restless intensity and poised stillness, his willingness to photograph anything, his mastery of many styles, his appreciation of both the uses and the uselessness of the past, and his love and disdain for tradition. Print 217, from the series “Cherry Blossoms” (1980), shows the windshield of an automobile splattered with delicate pink petals fallen from a cherry tree: the glass is hard, industrial, modern; the petals are emblematic of a traditional Japan. The picture is what?

Mr. Tomatsu’s control of technique is awesome. (Not “awesome” the way teenagers use awesome; awesome as in inspiring amazement and humility.) Print 148, “Untitled (Kadena, Okinawa),” from the series “Chewing Gum and Chocolate” (1969) is a picture of a United States military aircraft, I believe a B-52 bomber. Perhaps it is on a bombing mission to Vietnam. The Japanese understand the might these aircraft represent. The plane appears to be taking off and is headed out the top left of the picture. The foreground that frames the bottom and right of the picture could be wild grasses; it is hard to tell because the whole image is blurred.

If Mr. Tomatsu had wanted a sharp image of this plane, he was certainly capable of producing it; the blurring makes the picture phantasmagoric. It is a giant bird, elegant and lethal, rising from a landscape too primitive to be defined. This is the genius of Shomei Tomatsu. To call him one of the great photographers or even great artists of the 20th century is to slight him; he is one of the great spirits.