Imagine sitting in front of a large picture window and looking out. What you see before you isn’t your usual view, though, because you have been transported back to Japan at the turn of the 20th century by means of a massive book containing nearly seven hundred views of Japan in the last decade or so of the Meiji era (1867-1912). That it weighs some fourteen pounds (I viewed it on my newly-bought book-stand) ceases to matter as the photographs simply take over; the huge format becomes altogether appropriate, and readers will be mesmerized by its cinematographic proportions, vivid colors and sheer presence.
No wonder the Japanese call photography shashin, which means “truthful copy”. With a little imagination, you can be right there; you can almost smell the incense in the temples of Kyoto or experience a bustling Osaka street circa 1900. Bright-hued kimonos are everywhere, as are amazingly beautiful panoramic nature scenes, vivid sunsets and close-up studies of people engaged in all sorts of activities, from dainty geishas and geikos (Kyoto geishas) to fierce-looking men with swords (perhaps former samurais reliving a recent past), bare-chested laborers and shopkeepers proudly displaying their various wares
Japan’s transition from a quasi-feudal society to the modern age is markedly present in these photographs; some people are wearing western-style clothes, there are English signs in the stores, trams in the streets and telegraph poles, but the shrines and temples with their attendant priests and orange-clad monks have not changed, and of course there are always those brilliant kimonos and people pushing or pulling huge loads in wooden carts.
All this is due to the incredible curatorial work of Sebastian Dobson and Sabine Arqué, who have collected all these wonderful photographs and supplied readers with an informative accompanying text in English, French and German (one would have liked more of this) as well as detailed captions for each picture. Most of the photographs are hand-colored, but there are some striking black-and-white examples as well, no less impressive.
The history of photography in Japan goes back to 1857, when Shiro Ichiki (1828-1903) made a portrait daguerreotype of a gentleman named Nariakira Shimazu, a feudal lord. By 1862, Hikoma Ueno of Nagasaki (1838-1904) had opened the first photographic studio in Japan; many others were to follow his lead, and in 1872 Kuichi Uchida (1844-1875) was even able to obtain permission to photograph the emperor Meiji himself. Foreign photographers such as Felice Beato (1832-1909) and Baron Raimund von Stillfried-Ratenicz (1839-1911) became very active in early Japanese photography, and by the 1890s there were many amateur Japanese photographers as well, when cameras became more portable and affordable. People from many walks of life took up photography; Tokugawa Yoshinobu (1837-1913), the last Shōgun, became a very keen photographer during his retirement; a picture he took of his cat (with a ball and a bow around its neck, unfortunately not included here) may well be the earliest Japanese pet-portrait! Professional photographers began travelling around the country in order to depict daily life; many of them featured close-up posed portraits of people such as fishermen and laborers as well as samurai and courtiers, many of which are presented in this book. Photography was everywhere in Japan by 1900, as the wide geographical range of the material in this book indicates, covering five regions of the country, and including rare studies made in 1872 by Stillfried of the Ainu people in Hokkaido. The journey starts in Nagasaki, which for a long time was the port through which most foreign travelers entered Japan, on to Kobe, Osaka and Kyoto and then Yokohama (including Mount Fuji) through to Tokyo and finally to Nikko and Hokkaido.
In July 1916, the Bengali poet and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) delivered a farewell address entitled “The Spirit of Japan” at Keio University as he concluded a visit to Japan. In it he issued a not-so veiled warning:
if the children of Japan forget their past, if they stand as barriers, choking the stream that flows from the mountain peak of their ancient history, their future will be deprived of the water of life that has made her culture so fertile with richness of beauty and strength.
Like so many other foreigners, Tagore had his own ideas about what Japan would or should be like, a construct in his own mind of which he did not wish to lose sight, but one which didn’t always please the Japanese, as he would find out later on subsequent visits. It wasn’t quite “looking for the lost” yet, to quote Alan Booth’s phrase; Tagore, drawing on his own observations as a colonialized Indian, felt a need to caution his audience that becoming too Europeanized would be dangerous, not so much because of Japan’s “imitation of the outer features of the West”, but “the acceptance of the motive force of the Western civilization as her own,” namely the “spirit” of the West.
Dobson and Arqué’s choice of 1900 as the starting date for this book was an excellent idea to illustrate how this was working out. Their book shows that the Japanese wanted to embrace new (read European) ways, but in 1900 many were very much attached to their traditional way of life, and perhaps were wondering whether the two world-views could co-exist as well as perhaps being anxious about moving too fast or too close to the West.
Photography eliminates the passing of time by fixing the present so that it’s always the present. This is illustrated particularly by photographs in which we can see people dressed in both western and Japanese clothes, or rickshaws travelling on the same streets as trams. It was the “modern” medium of photography which froze the liminality in time and did so much to preserve the past. The book is not a glimpse of a Japan still stuck in some sort of “mythical past”, but a revelation of a society in flux, moving two steps forward and one back, thus preserving its own “motive force” as well as “richness of beauty and strength.”
There is certainly a kind of tension, hard to describe exactly, present in some of the photographs in this book, something that one can’t quite put a finger on. Although Japanese photography had been around for nearly fifty years by 1900, the “modernization” of Japan was by no means complete by that date. This book presents a society which looks in some places as if it’s moving forwards rapidly towards the West, whilst in others it still appears much as it did in the not-so-distant past. For example, there is a black-and-white street view from Hakodate (1911) which consists completely of Western-style buildings; the pedestrians are all wearing European clothes and a man is going by on a bicycle. This is accompanied by a quote from Murray’s Handbook which reads “few if any old temples or other historical monuments exist [in Hokkaido].” Once in a while, the time frames even seem juxtaposed, with modern and traditional elements existing side-by-side; a view of Maedabashi Bridge in Tokyo shows people in both Japanese and Western dress, and there’s even a foreigner in a rickshaw who appears to have mislaid his driver. Over the course of the next decades the rickshaws would disappear entirely and “traditional” clothing, as it was now called, would be worn only by geishas or on special occasions.
There are so many stunning photographs in this book that it’s hard to pick out highlights; for me there were some favorites, however. There was, for example, the charming little boy with a huge sword posing with a contrastingly large adult, who was, one assumes, teaching him how to be a big, fierce samurai (there’s plenty of humor in this book); there were other, unposed photographs of laughing children playing or walking with their kimono-clad mothers, but that one remained with me. I loved the panoramic views of temples, shrines and other sacred buildings; in particular I would single out the view of the entrance to the Bunshōin Mausoleum, which was the Tokugawa family temple. Here, through the intricately-carved gate visitors can go through and become freed from the three passions of greed, hatred, and foolishness. There are two women standing in the doorway—are they coming in or going out cleansed? An atmospheric winter scene taken in Tokyo’s Ueno Park (1890) shows snow-dusted buildings and people, one of whom is wearing the traditional mino, a coat made of rice-straw, with which readers might be familiar as it features in a famous work by Hiroshige. A small black-and-white photograph features a stiff-looking bevy of American tourists posing in a Japanese house as their hostess squats on the floor. We have jugglers and performers doing tricks at the top of immensely high and rather precarious ladders, and there’s a lady in Kobe selling vegetables with a huge array of mostly enoki mushrooms (I think) and daikons (large white Japanese radishes) neatly and impressively set out in front of her. For scenic views, the Suwa Shrine in Nagasaki beckons visitors with its beautiful tree-lined alley and torii, a tea plantation stretches far and wide like a green ocean, and there are plenty of stunning rural vistas, too. Towards the end of the book we have a haunting black-and-white study by Baron Stillfried of a solitary Ainu man standing on a rock and gazing out to sea; one wonders what he is thinking as the sun goes down—it’s an image that stays with the viewer long after the book has been closed.
This book is a real treasure, and well worth the hefty price, although it would be nice if Taschen would consider issuing a smaller-format, less costly version, because it’s a must-have for anyone interested in Japan. Dobson and Arqué have delivered the finest collection of old Japanese photographs available in book form, and it will be hard for anyone to come up with a better collection.