25 colored photographs of the 19th century from the Land of the Rising Sun: geisha, samurai and the most ordinary Japanese

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

British artist Felix Beato arrived in Japan in 1863 and spent over 20 years in that country. He became a pioneer in coloring photographs, and his work is valuable and unique due to the rarity of photographs of Japan during the Edo period - the time of the establishment of the Tokugawa dictatorship and, at the same time, the "golden age" of Japanese literature. The result of his work was 2 volumes of photographs "National Types", which included 100 genre and portrait works, 98 city panoramas and landscapes. In our review there are 25 photos from this unique collection.

Felice Beato is a British Italian. He was born in Venice in 1832 and grew up in the British protectorate of Corfu. Beato became interested in photography in his youth and studied this difficult business, working with James Robertson, one of the first British war photographers. Together with the master, he visited China, India and the Crimea.

In 1862, Beato sells most of his work, invests in the London Stock Exchange and quickly remains in nothing. A year later, he decides to leave the UK and go on a new adventure. This time he goes to Japan.

The year 1863 in Japan was the height of the civil war and the time when the country, which had spent several centuries in seclusion, was forced to expand trade relations with the West under American pressure.

Japan was torn apart by internal strife - the camp was divided by the Imperial Palace in Kyoto and the Tokugawa Shogunate in Edo. This period, which went down in history as Bakumatsu, became one of the darkest in the history of the country. As a result, the last Tokugawa shogun Yoshinobu renounced the throne, giving it up to the young emperor Mutsuhito. It was during this difficult period that Felice Beato came to Japan.

Beato arrived in Yokohama, where he subsequently lived for over 20 years. There he met another Briton, the artist Charles Virgman, and they opened a joint venture. Beato took photographs, and Virgman made sketches and prints based on them.

At that time, traveling in Japan was very dangerous, since the Shogunate's samurai killed all foreigners. Somehow Beato himself faced two "ronin" (as the free samurai were called). It was only thanks to his military connections that Beato was able to travel to the Japanese hinterland, where he was able to document the passing feudal age of Japan. Many of Beato's photographs were hand-colored using Japanese watercolor techniques.

Among his first Japanese photographs are portraits of the Satsuma samurai. They posed for him with pleasure. In one of these photographs, there are 4 samurai in the frame, which symbolically demonstrate the superiority of Japanese traditions over Western knowledge. One of them sits with a bare knife, and the other casually holds a book of English literature in his hands.

The Japanese samurai is a warrior who has taken an oath of allegiance and serves his master. He had to follow all the orders of his master - even kill a person or commit suicide. If the master turned out to be unworthy by the standards of Japanese society, then the shame fell on the samurai, who could commit hara-kiri. If the master was killed, for the samurai it was no less a shame - after all, he failed to protect him.

Complete self-control, tough discipline, stoicism and restraint of emotions - all these traits are reflected in the samurai culture. The death of the samurai was treated with contempt. Their life path, according to bushido, is the path of a warrior.

In the photo you can see in detail the clothes and ammunition of the samurai. By far the most impressive weapon of a samurai was the katana sword. For the Japanese, this is not just a weapon - it is the soul of a warrior. Exquisite shape, sharp blade make the katana a real work of art.

Japanese geisha are a special caste. They adorn tea houses with their beauty, and conversations with their wit. Get to know these amazing women with 20 retro photographs of Japanese geishas.