Recent Comments

I am surprised that you did not quote from or cite the several tobacco pipe books written by Barney Suzuki, one of the most prolific researchers in Japan on this topic: barneytt@nifty.com.

Your article was a wonderful read. I came across it while staying in a 250-year-old house in a rural area of Japan, and it made the experience feel even more vivid. As the cold seeps through the wooden walls, it’s easy to imagine how people once lived in these homes.

Thank you for such a beautifully written and thoughtful piece. It truly added depth to my experience.

I did some digging and found my images online. The first one might have been taken by Usui Shuzaburo. The second one can be found in two versions in the Nagasaki Database – VERSION ONE attributted to Suzuki Shinichi II (marking in the bottom left corner) and VERSION TWO unattributted, but has a marking in the bottom right corner (#81). The description says the photos were taken before Ueno was designated as a park in 1873.

I have also found a third one in the Nagasaki Database that was probably taken before 1868.

Your article inspired me to look through my digital archive and I managed to identify two photos featuring racetrack. They are not revolutionary in comparison to your collection but you might enjoy checking them out.

I also have some shots of Shinobazu Pond’s Bentenjima Island taken from similar angle as in Kimbei’s, but two of them show wooden buildings on both sides of the passage to the island. I was wondering if that would date the image pre- or post-Kimbei shot.

I was just looking through Dominic Winter Auctioneers and stumbled upon the same photo as in your headline :D (image 12/15).

By the way, the auction house had quite a few photos by Charles Leander Weed listed in the past. Not very common and worth checking out.

I’ve seen the headline photograph many times before, but I was mostly focused on the island on the Shinobazu Pond, not knowing the image also includes the racetrack. I see that your copy doesn’t have any signatures or serial numbers, but there are ones that do, for example this one .

Also, the last photo in the article comes with two caption options:
1) a copy at Rijksmuseum – as a part of an accordion album of 30 photographs that share similar series number with an inverted (or mirrored) “N”
2) a copy at Nagasaki Database with caption attributted to Kajima Seibei atelier

Thank you for all your work and effort in making antique Japanese photography more accessible. A photo will be just a random image, if it’s not backed by a context or a story and I trully appreciate your research and insight following every new article. I hope you will keep the project up for many years to come.

I enjoyed reading your notes and seeing the images from earlier years.

The sight of the Amarube Bridge always brings chills. I rode over it a number of times when I lived in Tottori. Passing through there a few years ago, I noted a concrete one had been built, in 2010.

Hello Kjeld, to keep this message short-ish my grandfather by the surname of Hamfeldt perished in the Yokohama earthquake fire, with the assumption that he had died in their home and reduced to ashes my grandmother took up some ash to take with her and was evacuated away by a British Navy ship I think – to the UK.
Thank you so very much for posting these pages which have given me such an awe inspiring realisation of how terrible it really all was.