Hand Coloured Japan 1870 -1912 / Gallery Text

HAND COLOURED JAPAN 1870 - 1912

Class Room is holding an exhibition of early examples of Japanese photography taken between 1870 and 1912. Many images in the exhibition are albumen silver prints, this was the first commercially exploitable method for producing a photographic print on a paper base from a negative. In 1847, Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard discovered that you could use the albumen found in egg whites to bind photographic chemicals to paper.

The colouring of early photography first emerged in Europe in 1839, hand-colouring of photography gained considerable popularity in Japan in the 1860s. There are hand coloured photographs in the exhibition by Tamamura Kōzaburō (1856—1923) and Ogawa Kazumasa (1860 –1929) but the majority of the authors are unknown for the moment.

Photography initially was seen as a symbol of westernisation, in Japanese society being photographed was largely unwelcome. Yet over time the popularity of photography in Japan, caused print makers to be confronted with the cold hard reality that their medium was entering an identity crisis. In the face of early photography printmakers quickly felt they are becoming inadequate especially regarding record keeping and journalism.

The time that these photographs were taken is important as Japan was undergoing a tremendous change. The Meiji Period (1868 – 1912) followed a short civil war and the resignation of Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu. It signalled a restoration of complete power to the Imperial Family, the Emperor Meiji and the implementation of a system of government that was based on the government structure of the independent German state of Prussia transformed Japan forever. The Emperor and his parliament created a revolution that pushed Japan from being a pre-industrial feudal society ruled by warlords (Tokugawa Shogunate and the various Daimyō) to a great industrial power on the world stage.

Woodblock or ukiyo-e had been a popular way of depicting developments and life in Japan, the ukiyo-e that subsequently emerged in the wake of the Meiji restoration was perceived as decedent, and lacking quality. Many print makers during this time captured the new introduction of railways to Japan, and the rapid transformation of Tokyo with various European styled buildings; Yet in the Westernization of Japan, print block makers were confronted with the cold reality that their medium was entering an identity crisis and could not keep up with photography. In previous periods many painters in Japan had turned to ukiyo-e, the printed image was affordable to the public, whilst painting was extremely expensive. Print makers would create hundreds of thousands of copies and sell them often for the price of a bowl of rice (if I only had a time machine). During the Meiji period many aspiring print makers eventually abandoned the traditional art and turned to the new photographic methods.

The relatively new practice of photography here has not been used not to capture the cultural rupture of the synthesis between east and west (European architecture, industrialisation and clothing), but rather focuses on the traditional everyday life in Japan. While traditional woodblock artists such as Yōshū Chikanobu and Nagashima Shungyō, whose work is on show, focused on the new Japan.

Matthew Macaulay