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Early Japanese Railways 1853-1914 is a cultural and engineering history of railway building in Japan during the Meiji era. The 19th century was the first age of sustained, comprehensive contact between Asia and the West. This book describes the history of Japanese social adaptation to railway development, with many details never-before-published in English.
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The Journey of “A Good Type”: From Artistry to Ethnography in Early Japanese Photographs
When Japan opened its doors to the West in the 1860s, delicately hand-tinted photographic prints of Japanese people and landscapes were among its earliest and most popular exports.
Renowned European photographers Raimund von Stillfried and Felice Beato established studios in Japan in the 1860s; the work was soon taken up by their Japanese protégés and successors Uchida Kuichi, Kusakabe Kimbei, and others.
Hundreds of these photographs, collected by travelers from the Boston area, were eventually donated to Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, where they were archived for their ethnographic content and as scientific evidence of an “exotic” culture.
In this elegant volume, visual anthropologist David Odo examines the Peabody’s collection of Japanese photographs and the ways in which such objects were produced, acquired, and circulated in the nineteenth century.
His innovative study reveals the images’ shifting and contingent uses―from tourist souvenir to fine art print to anthropological “type” record―were framed by the desires and cultural preconceptions of makers and consumers alike.
Understood as both images and objects, the prints embody complex issues of history, culture, representation, and exchange.
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OldPhotosJapan.com — a photo blog about old Japan that reads like a book and works like an archive. All the photographs are from the Kjeld Duits Collection and available for licensing at MeijiShowa.com. Use when you need historical photos, maps or illustrations of Japan for your newspaper article, book, documentary, advertising or other project. For questions, contact us.