History of Photography

ISSN: 0308-7298 (Print) 2150-7295 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/thph20

Editorial
Luke Gartlan
To cite this article: Luke Gartlan (2009) Editorial, History of Photography, 33:2, 109-111, DOI:
10.1080/03087290902767869
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03087290902767869

Published online: 06 Jan 2011.

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Editorial

1 Kinoshita Naoyuki, The Early Years of

Japanese Photography, in Anne Wilkes
Tucker et al., The History of Japanese
Photography, New Haven: Yale University
Press 2003, 1435.

2 For example, see Ishii Kendo,

Shashinjutsu no hajime in Meiji jibutsu
kigen, Tokyo: Kyosando 1908, 166184;
Tsuki no kagami: zenkoku shashinshi
retsuden, ed. Shimaoka Sojiro, Beppu,
Ky
ush
u: Tsukushi shimi no Kai 1998 [1916];
Josef Maria Eder, Geschichte der
Photographie, Halle: Wilhelm Knapp 1932,
10311037; and Erich Stenger, Japan und
die Fruhzeit der Photographie,
Technikgeschichte 30 (1941), 116124. The
latter two sources reflect the promotion of
academic studies between the fascist regimes
of interwar German-speaking Europe and
Japan.
3 For an incisive discussion of these art
historical prejudices, see Ellen P. Conant,
Introduction: A Historiographical
Overview, in Challenging Past and Present:
The Metamorphosis of Nineteenth-Century
Japanese Art, Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press 2006, 127.

This special issue of History of Photography contributes to a field of study that has
received much recent critical and archival attention: photography in nineteenthcentury Japan. Although there have been several efforts to present an account of
this history, the diversity and ubiquity of the medium throughout the Japanese
islands during this period belies any cohesive narrative of historical developments. Such major exhibitions as The History of Japanese Photography, held at
Houstons Museum of Fine Arts in 2003, brought a greater public and academic
awareness of this field to an English-language readership, but a solitary essay on
the early history of Japanese photography could not substantiate the claim of the
exhibition title.1 Inevitably, such ambitious accounts have failed to address the
breadth and dynamism of the mediums early history in Japan.
This issue presents six detailed studies that emphasise some notable aspects
of nineteenth-century Japanese photography. It is the contributors shared
intention to promote a greater critical engagement with this subject that will
open new avenues of investigation, question orthodox approaches and promote
novel conceptual strategies both toward the history of photography and modern
Japanese visual culture. These essays represent the work of an emerging generation of scholars eager to promote a rapprochement between the history of
photography and Japanese visual studies. Although the field has a rich history
in Japanese- and European-language scholarship extending back to the early
twentieth century,2 Western scholars of Japan have only recently begun to
acknowledge the mediums significance in nineteenth-century Japan. In part,
this newfound interest is symptomatic of the current reassessment of this period
that has brought its long neglected visual culture to the forefront of critical
discussion. Many of the disciplinary prejudices that have resulted in this period
being described as an art-historical void are no less pertinent to the field of
photographic history.3 It is no surprise that a critique of the marginal status
accorded to late-nineteenth-century Japanese visual culture places photography
and other imported reprographic technologies of the period at the centre of
current critical debate.
The period under investigation was one of extraordinary upheaval in
Japanese society, conventionally divided into the Bakumatsu (18531867) and
Meiji periods (18681912). After more than two centuries of relative political
stability in Japan, the arrival of the American squadron of Commodore Perry in
18531854 effectively signalled the end of the Tokugawa shogunates isolationist
policy (sakoku). In subsequent years, the Tokugawa regime ratified several
treaties with visiting European missions that permitted foreigners to live and
work in the so-called treaty ports of Yokohama, Nagasaki, Hakodate and, later,
Kobe and Niigata. While these new residents brought greater access to foreign
technologies and modes of thought, their presence also stoked the fires of
domestic discontent with the political management of the Tokugawa regime.
In 1868 the Meiji Restoration, an effective coup de
tat, ousted the old regime and
reinstated the emperor as the political figurehead of the nation. In his name, the
History of Photography, Volume 33, Number 2, May 2009
ISSN 0308-7298 # 2009 Taylor & Francis

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Luke Gartlan

new political leadership instigated a programme of widespread modernisation

that sanctioned the adoption of foreign practices and technologies. Although
Japan therefore came under significant external pressure during this period, it
retained its political sovereignty. While the arrival of photography in other
regions of Asia has often been interpreted as a tool of colonial expansion and
subjugation, the context of Japan requires the suspension and re-examination of
postcolonial approaches to the regions photographic history. The early Japanese
interest in the technology, the emergence of a domestic market and industry, and
the cameras deployment for the political purposes of the government all point to
the specific cultural adoptions and adaptations of photography to local circumstances and needs.
The essays presented in this issue explore such diverse themes as the careers
and portfolios of expeditionary photographers, the reception and circulation of
photographers work, the materials and manufacture of photographic goods, the
cross-cultural interactions of Japanese photographers and their foreign counterparts, and the political uses of photographs in the formation of the modern
Japanese nation-state and its citizens. Sebastian Dobson directs our attention to
the little-known photographers of the Prussian diplomatic expedition in Japan of
18601861. Along with my own contribution, this essay insists on an inclusive
response to the role of early foreign photographers in Japan that acknowledges
their close collaboration and interaction with Japanese scholars and officials.
Dobsons essay moves beyond the rediscovery of a few neglected foreign photographers to demonstrate their dependency on their Japanese hosts assistance and
cooperation. Such work points to the continuing vitality of research on early
foreign photographers in Japan, but within an inclusive framework that
acknowledges and explores their close interaction with Japanese practitioners
and local visual and cultural practices.
In contrast, Karen Fraser rightly points out that Japanese photographers of
the nineteenth century have received short shrift from Western scholars. Several
articles in this issue redress this imbalance through the sustained analysis of
individual photographers work. These include the domestic operations of the
Kumamoto-based studio photographer Tomishige Rihei (Karen Fraser), the portfolio of the official expeditionary photographer Matsuzaki Shinji (David R. Odo),
and the export souvenir photographs of the Yokohama-based photographer
Kusakabe Kimbei (Mio Wakita). Such work emphasises the broad nature of the
photographic industry, from the major metropolitan centres and treaty ports to
the provincial towns and distant territories of the Japanese archipelago. This
attention to the domestic uses of photography and its neglected operators makes
an important material contribution to the history of early Japanese photography.
In several instances, the contributors essays converge at certain key issues.
David Odos discussion of the Japanese naval expedition to the Ogasawara
islands in the mid1870s echoes some of the issues raised by the Prussian
diplomatic mission to Japan. These essays highlight the rapid assimilation of
foreign uses of photography into the official practices of the Meiji State. As an
extensive, culturally diverse island chain, the Japanese archipelago became the
subject of numerous naval expeditions, both internal and external, that sought to
define the parameters of the emerging nation-state of Japan.4 Expedition photography played a key role in the formation of geographic and ethnographic
discourses that helped chart and define the sense of Japanese national identity.
Mikiko Hirayama further explores the ideological significance of photography in
the fabrication of Japanese nationhood in her discussion of the photographic
portraits of Emperor Meiji. These portraits became icons of his reign, officially
sanctioned and distributed to the prefectures under strict regulations of display
and safekeeping.
110

4 See David L. Howell, Geographies of

Identity in Nineteenth-Century Japan,
Berkeley: University of California Press 2005.

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5 Kinoshita Naoyuki, Shashinga-ron:

shashin to ega no kekkon, Iwanami kindai
Nihon no bijutsu 4, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten
1996.

Mio Wakita discusses the representation of women in the work of the

Yokohama-based photographer Kusakabe Kimbei, specifically with reference to
the portrayal of geisha. Like Hirayama, her study draws attention to issues of
gender in the periods visual culture that paralleled the rising militarism and
imperial ambitions of the Japanese Empire. Both scholars are also at pains not to
partition the photographic document from other traditional and imported
media, but rather to emphasise its significance within broader pictorial practices
and debates of the period. Photography was a key medium of late-nineteenthcentury Japanese visual culture, but it often intersected with other media that
destabilised its medium-specific sanctity. From the hand colouring of Yokohama
souvenir photographs to the photographic reproduction of the emperors conte
crayon likeness, the marriage of different pictorial media was a prominent
feature of the periods visual culture.5 Finally, this issue closes with a bibliography of recent scholarship, which provides a resource for specialists and underlines the current interest in the field.
This issue follows the modified Hepburn system of romanisation for
Japanese words (shinbun), other than in a few instances of non-standard
accepted transliterations of names (Kimbei not Kinbei). Japanese words that
feature in standard English-language dictionaries and well-known place names
such as Tokyo and Kyoto are rendered without macrons except in the citation of
Japanese-language sources. Japanese names are provided in the Japanese conventional manner of family preceding given names, except in the case of some
authors publishing in Western languages.
Luke Gartlan

111