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This is a wonderful article. I grew up in Canada with what we thought were hibachi, cooking Oscar Meyer wieners over the coals made bright red by lighting fluid. Years later, I came to live in Japan and now call an old Meiji era structure in Nara city home. The previous inhabitants had built and lived in it uninterrupted for many generations. When we switched ownership, we were delighted to discover they had left us a variety of hibachi that they seem to have continued to use until the very end. Even now, the soft charcoal that accumulated over the years fills these hibachi. I think about the early morning conversations, the exchanges of ideas and daily concerns expressed while sipping tea, and the whispered neighborhood gossip or witty exchanges as the sake flowed, all arising briefly around these hibachi as that energy from the sun captured in photosynthesis long before was gently released into the air as heat for these people.

@Kjeld Duits: Well, I’m not from the U.S. either, so the name of the city might not tell you much, but anyway greetings from Poland in Central Europe. :)

@Kjeld Dutis: Thank you for the reference photos, they are indeed “less popular” angles. I must say, after seeing them, the “L12 Nagoya Castle (C )” by Adolfo Farsari also has an unusual perspective.

It turns out that 140916-0168-PP and 190101-0006-PP were part of my digital archive since 2011, but the 190101-0007-PP was quite new to me. I could swear I’ve seen it somewhere before and so I did a little search and it popped up in Syracuse University Art Museum collection. What’s funny is that 140916-0168-PP can be found in Nagasaki Database, but it’s so heavily cropped that not only the Stillfried’s caption (and attribution), but the whole lower part of the photo is missing. Tokyo Photographic Art Museum also has a copy, but they didn’t recognize it as Nagoya Castle and simply captioned it as 城.

Lastly, I don’t know why, but I was somehow convinced you work from the U.S.. Sorry about that. :)

I have a few questions.:

1 – Yokohama and Shinbashi stations were built according to the same project. There are many photos of these stations and they are very similar. How can they be distinguished, especially by their facade? Do they have the same forecourt?
2 – Is there a map of this area, the same as the map of Yokohama that you presented?
3. What can be written on the sign hanging to the right (for us) of the building?

@Kjeld Dutis: That’s an interesting story :) One would think that Japanese archives should be full of drawings, paintings and photos of such a popular building and yet they needed to search for reference in a foreign country. Now I wonder which angle are we talking about and if I’ve seen it before.

I assume the “556” photo must be this one. The caption is the same style as in “565”. You can see the trees growing on the mount between the Honmaru and the white building, so they must’ve been taken in the same timeframe. In the Tamamura’s version the trees are absent.

Tamamura’s caption does seem to be plastered over another one, but I have no idea what it could have been. The only other copies I’ve seen had no caption at all.

From the caption we can attribute the photo to Adolfo Farsari.

@Kjeld Dutis: As far as I can tell your “16302-0038” is exactly the same as the one from the Kunstkamera Museum, just heavily cropped in comparison to the original. The style of caption would suggest Kajima Seibei, but it would need futher verification. There are two major differences between the photo from the article and the one from the museum website. Firstly, look at the roof of the dark building just in front of the Honmaru (slightly to the left) – in the Tamamura’s version it has a “double roof” (I have no idea how it’s called), while in the other photo the roof is simple and identical the whole lenght. Secondly, focus on the roof of the building in the foreground, the one set diagonaly. In the Tamamura’s version it hardly reaches the other white building, but in the other photo it almost touches it. In the time between those photos the building was extended, and you can also tell that by the difference in color of the roof tiles – the old part has darker tiles, probably covered in moss, and the new part has clean, bright tiles. I’m no expert in the castle history but there were quite significant renovations made in the time those two photographs were taken.

So I fell for it. :(
I’m sorry.

Hi. It seems that I accidentally discovered the author-photographer of many of your photos without authorship. John Lawson Stoddard (April 24, 1850 – June 5, 1931) was an American teacher, writer, and photographer. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lawson_Stoddard )

In his book (Japan: illustrated and decorated with one hundred and thirty-eight reproductions of photographs, 1897) I found many of your photographs. And this one too. If, of course, these are his pictures. :)
You can view this book here – https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101054570955&seq=1