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Katsumi Watanabe is a photographer born in Morioka City, Iwate Prefecture in 1941. He was one of the photographers who worked in Shinjuku.

While attending Morioka First High School, he worked as an assistant at the Morioka branch of the Mainichi Newspapers, where he discovered the fascination of photography. After graduating from high school, he joined the Japan National Railways (JNR), but his love for photography was unwavering, and he moved to Tokyo in 1961. In 1965, he began working as a “流しの写真屋” in Shinjuku, taking portraits for 200 yen per set of three photos per pose. 1973, his “Kabukicho, Shinjuku” was published in the “Album” section of the June issue of “Camera Mainichi,” which attracted a lot of attention. In 1973, “Shinjuku Kabukicho” was published in the June issue of Camera Mainichi. Shinjuku-Kabukicho” won the ‘Camera Mainichi’ Album Award, given to the best work in that year's ‘Album’ issue. In the same year, he published a photo collection “Shinjuku Gunbutsu Den” (薔薇画報社). In 1998, he received the Photographic Society of Japan's annual award for his photo collection “Shinjuku".