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Image reflection has been noticed ever since humans first saw their faces reflected in a pool of water, and thousands of years later accepted the advantages of mirrors.
But unlike photographs, mirror reflections are temporary. The image, and whatever supernatural effect the subject might fear, is temporary, ignored and soon forgotten. But the image on a photograph remains even when the subject isn't there. So the superstition that shooting photos takes away the subject's soul is quite understandable.
A related superstition is of dolls which accept and keep souls, since a doll has the appearance of a human. Portrait photographs can be much more lifelike, as can painted portraits, like the one in Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray.
The Japanese for taking a photograph uses the verb toru, which means 'take'. In art, a portrait is painted or drawn, but a photograph is 'taken'. That emphasises that something (the soul, in this superstition) is taken.
A more specific superstition applies when there are several people in the frame; the person in the middle will die early. The middle person is chosen because early cameras were incapable of focusing on the entire group; whatever was in the middle had the sharpest focus. The spell would then befall the sharpest, most life-like image.
"Befall" is a good old word to give a superstition a bit of authenticity.
If you look at early group photos, you'll probably find there's not much difference in focus for any of the subjects.
A common explanation for the middle one dying early is because they would likely be the the group's most senior person and the oldest, and therefore die before the others. That makes sense, though quite often in a small group photo the middle person is a child, with mum and dad either side.
But whatever the reason, we'd need to see enough photos, names and dates of death, before any support could be given to this superstition.
Dolls and photography taking souls are worldwide superstitions, not just in Japan. If soul-capturing were true, then given the countless number of dolls and billions of security cameras in the world, none of us would have any soul at all!
It's true that Japanese use the verb toru (take) for photographs, as is the case in most languages.
What is being taken, or captured, is the state of the subject within that moment in time. Just as we take a note of something, or take a look, and so on. We also take a bow, take time when we take a bath, and you might take a dim view of this last example; take a crap. Often we don't use verbs with their first definition in a dictionary.