Encounters and Transformations in the mid-nineteenth century

When the Tokugawa shōgunate enforced its isolationist foreign policy known as the sakoku in 1636, Japan intentionally severed most ties with the outside world in an effort to limit foreign influences that could threaten the newly established internal peace. Despite this national seclusion, the country maintained commercial and cultural exchanges with Dutch merchants, who were settled on the small, artificial island of Deshima in Nagasaki. Through these ventures, a trickle of information about developments in the West, especially in the fields of medicine and military technology, and a large body of artistic knowledge were imported to Japan in the forms of textbooks and manuals. These materials were soon diligently translated into Japanese and made accessible to a broader domestic audience.

In the mid-nineteenth century, the arrival of U.S. Navy Commodore Matthew Perry in Edo Bay marked a turning point in Edo Japan (1603-1868). Commanding four imposing ‘Black Ships’ and acting on orders from the U.S. President Millard Fillmore, Perry pressured the Tokugawa shōgunate into opening its ports through a series of diplomatic and commercial negotiations. Confronted with superior Western firepower and aware of the looming threat of colonisation in East Asia, Japan reluctantly signed the Treaty of Kanagawa in 1854, signalling the end of more than 250 years of enforced isolation.

These major political changes also culminated in the end of the shōgunal system and the restoration of imperial rule by Emperor Meiji on January 3rd, 1868, officially announcing the dawn of the Meiji restoration period. With the country's forceful opening to foreigners, Japan observed the influx of Western culture, including its new modern technologies and ideas. To assert their national power on the international scene, the government launched multiple campaigns and policies, such as the 'Civilisation and Enlightenment' policy called 'Bunmei-kaika,' to drive the country out of the feudal system and embrace Western-style modernisation. While this transformation opened doors to new technology, it also threatened Japan’s deeply rooted artistic heritage, which had to contend with foreign materials, methods, and tastes.

As Japan began its intense modernisation, photography became a defining tool for demonstrating the country’s transition from the traditional framework of the shōgunate to the modern ideas of the West. To the Japanese, photography became a way to document and interpret their rapidly evolving identity. To Westerners, photography became a medium that made this fundamentally different “other” culture, that was Japan, visible and fuelled their increasing appetite for Japanese culture. In this way, much of Japanese photography’s early development not just recorded history but also reflected the nation’s evolving relationship with the West. It contributed to defining its new cultural landscape and visual identity, both in the eyes of its people and those of the outside world.

The Emergence of Photography in Japan

In 1839, Frenchman Louis Daguerre (1787-1851) introduced the daguerreotype on the international scene, the first successful method of capturing images with light. Word of this groundbreaking technology and Daguerre’s successful photographic experiments likely reached Japan in the 1840s. According to Japanese photography professor Ozawa Takeshi, the first daguerreotype camera was imported to Japan in 1848 by Nagasaki merchant Ueno Shunnojo via the Dutch trading settlement on Deshima Island [1]. This camera was sold in 1849 to Shimazu Nariakira, a feudal lord of the Satsuma clan. Yet, despite his enthusiasm, early attempts to use the camera were unsuccessful due to his lack of formal photographic training.

A decade later, photography began to spread across Japan as Westerners arrived and settled in the treaty ports of Nagasaki, Yokohama, and Hakodate. With them came imported cameras, photography-related equipment, and materials that dramatically improved the work quality. In the 1860s, foreign photographers, such as Baron Raimund von Stillfried (1839-1911) and the Italian–British photographer Felice Beato, visited Japan. They produced some of the earliest series of photographs in the country, capturing picturesque landscapes and striking portraits, including one of a geisha (2025.008) taken between 1870 and 1875. After receiving training from these foreign pioneers, Japan’s professional photographers, including Ueno Hikoma (1838-1904) and Shimooka Renjo (1823-1914), opened their portrait studios and began to operate around 1862. They ushered the country into a new era of domestic photographic practice.

The popularisation of the practice in Japan gained momentum during the early years of the Meiji era (1868-1912). In 1868, a civil war between the ruling Tokugawa shōgunate and the coalition seeking power for the Imperial Court, also known as the Boshin War, broke out across the country. Consequently, many samurai and soldiers had their official portraits taken in professional photography studios before heading to the battlefield [2]. These photographs served as cherished keepsakes for families of the warriors who faced the painful uncertainty of never seeing their loved ones again. At the time, the cost of such portraits limited the practice to the wealthy [3]. Yet, photography gradually became more than a luxury, as it emerged as a powerful medium for preserving identity, memory, and connection across distance and during times of political upheaval.

Shashin, a Copy of Truth

In Japanese, the word koga, meaning "light picture," is now commonly used as a direct translation of the word "photograph". However, in the second half of the nineteenth century in Japan, it was the phrase shashinkyo that became the official Japanese counterpart of the term "camera obscura," a device that produced images with uncanny accuracy, mirroring the world as it was [4]. At the time, shashin referred to paintings that were near-exact reproductions of reality, while the kyo, meaning “mirror”, emphasised the technical nature of photography. This included the mirrored metal plate of the daguerreotype, the glass plate used in the wet-collodion process that produced albumen photographs, and the intricate mechanics of the lens itself. As photography became more widespread and photographs turned into everyday items, the word shashin eventually replaced the dominant word shashinkyo, while still inheriting its deep connection to truth and reality [5].

In the 1860s, Yōga (Western-style) painter Takahashi Yuichi, like many of his contemporaries, noted that while photography offered striking realism, it lacked the vivid colours of paintings [6]. Seeking to bridge this gap, Takahashi drew upon the skills of craftsmen who excelled at colouring albumen photographic prints with watercolours, as seen in "A Japanese Artist at Work" (2022.055). Driven by the same desire to represent “the real,” commercial photographers such as Felice Beato quickly embraced this breakthrough development. They hired trained artisans from the waning ukiyo-e and woodblock print industry to apply colours by hand onto photographic prints, thereby breathing life into black-and-white images. This collaboration between new technology and traditional craft gave rise to a thriving production industry, blending modern photography with traditional techniques to mass-produce richly colored photographic souvenirs for a growing consumer market.

In the late nineteenth century, tourists visiting Japan collected their favourite photographs, visual mementoes of their travels, and compiled them into albums they could take home and share with their friends and relatives. This curating process frequently took place in one studio where, as noted by Bennett, finished albums were often 'bound in ornate lacquer covers and encased in felt-lined cardboard boxes to protect them on the long sea journey home’ [7]. Other tourists, however, purchased separate photographs from different studios and assembled them later in Western-style albums, creating personalised souvenirs that blended Japanese imagery with Western sensibilities [8].

Famous views and scenes of manners and customs

Foreigners’ interest and demand for glimpses of Japan helped fuel the rapid growth of commercial photography studios. While Westerners originally established the industry, Japanese photographers soon came to dominate the market. Among them, Kusakabe Kimbei emerged as a central figure in the development of Japanese studio photography. He began his career working in the studios of Felice Beato and Baron von Stillfried, first as a photo colourist and later as an assistant. As Terry Bennett specifies, Kusakabe might have apprenticed with both Western photographers, especially since Stillfried took over Beato’s studio in 1877 [9]. In 1881, Kusakabe opened his own studio. By 1885, he began acquiring negatives from Stillfried and Beato, regularly reprinting them in his albums and assigning them his own stock numbers. Besides relying on these earlier works, Kusakabe developed his distinctive photographic style and became internationally renowned for his hand-coloured images depicting famous views and scenes of Japanese manners and customs.

Kusakabe’s photographs illustrate how photographers responded commercially to the growing tourist appetite for images of the country’s iconic natural and historical landmarks. His work often granted foreign viewers a glimpse of places that were otherwise difficult to access. He did not need to envy the works of ukiyo-e artists, since his technical composition of elements and mastery of perspective often represented the ideal landscape, ultimately a poetic escape for the viewer. In “Matsushima Inland Sea (Three Views in Japan)” (2021.018), he captured one of Japan's three most celebrated scenic sights, using a perspective and composition evocative of older landscape prints. Similarly, "Wisteria at Kameido, Tokyo" reflects Kusakabe’s familiarity with ukiyo-e artists’ repertoire of images and is reminiscent of a well-known 1856 woodblock print by Hiroshige from the series "One Hundred Famous Views of Edo".

Foreign visitors were also fascinated by Japan’s traditional manners and customs, formerly beyond reach but rendered knowable through photography. Eager to meet customers’ expectations, photographers like Kusakabe often staged composed scenes inside their studios, tapping into the most ‘exotic’ aspects of Japanese culture. Models posed as samurai and beauties, allowing tourists to take home curated glimpses of a romanticised Japan. 

In the photograph "Dancing Party" (2024.045), Kusakabe offered a stylised look into traditional dance performances by geisha. The posed stillness of the three women, frozen mid-movement in ornate kimono, reveals the photograph’s staged authenticity. Kusakabe recreated a domestic interior using props like a decorative four-panel folding screen (byōbu) adorned with birds and flowers, setting the scene with theatrical precision. 

In another composition, he photographed two female models reenacting a nighttime walk: one as a lady, the other as her attendant.  To simulate the outdoors, he arranged rocks on the studio floor, added bamboo and a standing lantern, and even painted a full moon onto the backdrop. This artificiality of this staged scene is paralleled by its anachronism because it alludes to poetic themes and motifs observed in Edo-period ukiyo-e prints and paintings, especially depictions of travelling women. 

Similarly, other photographs, including those of samurai, a class abolished after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, were staged using models dressed in old armour. Instead, photographers outfitted models with wigs and outdated costumes to recreate the phantasmagoric vision of “old Japan” for foreigners.

Not all photographs of Japan’s traditional manners and customs were confined to the studio. Kusakabe also ventured into the world beyond the set walls of his studios, capturing moments of contemporary life that offered genuine glimpses into sacred celebrations and the shifting landscapes of a modernising country. One such example is his photograph of a local festival, where a group of townspeople gather around a traditional parade float known as a dashi (2023.043-2). Atop the float stands an effigy of Emperor Jimmu, the mythological demigod founder of Japan's imperial family. This image reflects the Meiji government’s promotion of the imperial cult and national identity. Amid the sea of traditionally dressed festival-goers, one man holds a newly introduced Western umbrella among the traditionally dressed crowd, a subtle but powerful symbol of the coexistence of old and new Japan during this transformative era.

Ultimately, these photographs of Japan in the Kentoni Collection highlight the dual function of photography as a tool for visual documentation and as a powerful instrument for romantic expression. Newly established relations between Japan and the West in the second half of the nineteenth century gave rise to a desire for modernisation within the nation. Western pioneers and Japan’s photographers not only recorded the lived realities of the country but also negotiated and defined its image for both domestic and international audiences. Visual traces of ‘old Japan’ continued to act as ghostly reminders of a recent past, lost to the grasp of Western modernity. This nostalgia, manifested in photographs through performative and staged elements, raises questions about what we deem "authentic" or "truthful" in early portrayals of a rapidly modernising Japan. They nonetheless offer a rich lens through which to explore how Japan was not only documented but also imagined, staged, and shaped, both for itself and for the world beyond its borders.