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Photographs of 19th Century Japan
- kappasan 2y agoCool photos! My workplace is an old machiya [1] in Kyoto that's more than a hundred years old, so I kinda live like the people in these photos (not really of course - no konbini back then). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machiya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machiya
- xandrius 2y agoA friend of mine also recently redid a machiya in Kyoto. It even had the godness mask near the ceiling, amazing. Side note: I quickly checked the dedede project and I'm so enthralled with it! I will use it to improve my Japanese, thank you!
- kappasan 2y agoThanks so much for checking out the website! I hear machiya are quickly disappearing in Kyoto (often turned into generic apartments) so it's great to hear your friend is keeping the old city alive.
- helaoban 2y agoWhat did we do to our world.
- ChoHag 2y ago[dead]
- dclowd9901 2y agoIn some ways we made it better and in some ways we made it worse.
- qiqitori 2y agoThere was nothing to do back then. And if there was, it was crazy and/or reserved for the feudal lords. The primary income of the state was through alcohol taxes. Countries thought it was okay to invade other countries just to make themselves bigger/stronger countries. Nationalism, racism, sexism were the norm. Most people can't read/write. Information is scant and passed on by word of mouth.
- qiqitori 2y ago(Re-reading what I wrote above, I'd like to clarify that all the stuff I wrote above (except perhaps the alcohol tax one?) is of course not specific to Japan.)
- JPLeRouzic 2y agoThanks for the insight, but how it is different from today? - Countries now thought it IS okay to invade other countries just to make themselves bigger/stronger countries: There are currently many examples in the news. - Nationalism, racism, sexism are the norm: Nationalism is obviously on the rise. Racism never disappeared, even being tattooed is seen as an excuse to deport people. https://azmirror.com/2025/04/08/ice-director-envisions-amazon-like-mass-deportation-system-prime-but-with-human-beings/ https://azmirror.com/2025/04/08/ice-director-envisions-amazo... - Women and men are much more sexualized today than in my youth, despite the talk of feminism and #metoo. - Most people can't read/write (see Piza results). Only 10% of people can understand a simple statistics. - Information is scant (see social networks and disinformation) For context, about my post, I am from France, and what I wrote is not specific to any country but seems to me to apply to all.
- freetime2 2y agoInteresting, my reaction to these photos was "no thank you". It's fun to have a glimpse at the past, but I have no desire to live back then. In particular I'm happy to live in a modern, well-insulated home with climate control. Transportation is also a lot more convenient with cars, trains, and airplanes. And clothing and fashion of the day also looks very uncomfortable to me. Some of the nature scenes look lovely. But there are still plenty of places in Japan where you can experience the same sense of natural beauty and solitude.
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoIn ~150 years someone will pick some photos taken today and post them and someone will probably wonder the same thing. Go out and do some sightseeing - a lot of the sights in these photos still exist, but also, you look at these photos with different eyes than the people that grew up there do; changing how you look at your own environment or places of interest will probably also help.
- rsynnott 2y agoThese photos are, ah, not representative (most historical artefacts of this type aren’t; part of why people tend to have an impression of Victorian London as basically hell on earth is that, unusually, photos _were_ taken of the nasty bits, but really it was no worse than anywhere else at the time). You’d certainly prefer to live in Japan in 2025 than in 1860.
- low_tech_punk 2y agoThe photo titled "Thief, outside of mosquito-net." really piqued my interest.
- colordrops 2y agoThief with a katana...
- amiga386 2y agoIt could be worse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsujigiri https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsujigiri https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NDL-DC_1301844_Toyohara_Kunichika_cmb.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NDL-DC_1301844_Toyoh...
- colordrops 2y agoThat's messed up.
- hermitcrab 2y agoWhat is the story of the 'letter carrier'?
- BoingBoomTschak 2y agoHe carried letters.
- Aloisius 2y agoIt's a staged photograph by Kimbei Kusakabe (or Baron Raimund von Stillfried, they sold each other's works a lot and Kusakabe worked for Stillfried at one point) of hikyaku (express couriers) created to sate Western desire for souvenirs of "real" Japan. They had long since disappeared by the time the photographs were taken, replaced with uniformed men on bicycles. In the past though, they ran express mail in relays with a partner who carried a torch.
- merothwell 2y agoFascinating
- hermitcrab 2y agoThanks. Are the tattoos, the scanty clothing and the somewhat (to my eyes) effeminate appearance anything to do with being a courier? Or just something to titillate postcard buyers?
- WastedCucumber 2y agoI was curious about this too and did some searching. Found this source https://www.oldphotosjapan.com/photos/882/19th-century-japanese-letter-carrier-tattoos-vintage-albumen-print https://www.oldphotosjapan.com/photos/882/19th-century-japan... as well as the wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikyaku https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikyaku I didn't see anything about tattoos or the eye makeup, but the loincloth definitely came up. That was their typical clothing, regardless of weather, although I find kind of hard to believe.
- xandrius 2y agoAnd this stuff is why I love either super creative science fiction or travelogues (and the formers are hard to find). You can try to imagine a brand new world or simply try to re-live our real and past world. To me that is even more amazing, as it often can be the door to understanding some things of today's cultures and/or discover lost little worlds. Currently I'm going through this book of a guy who cycled across Central Asia and in Japan. The guy is sometimes quite direct in his writing (unlike other writers) but it's so interesting to experience the world of just 100-200 years ago through the lens of one living there. I truly recommend it.
- decimalenough 2y agoCan you share the name & author of the book? I'll plug Wilfred Thesiger's Arabian Sands as an extraordinary deep dive into a world that's entirely disappeared in our lifetimes: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/825419.Arabian_Sands https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/825419.Arabian_Sands
- imp0cat 2y agohttps://www.japanbiking.com/tours-2/previous-tours/thomas-stevens-1884/ https://www.japanbiking.com/tours-2/previous-tours/thomas-st... Both books (not just Japan, he cycled around the world): https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/1710 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/1710
- mc3301 2y agoIs it "Around the world on a bicycle"? I, too, would like to know the name of this book. Sounds interesting!
- xandrius 2y agoThomas Stevens, really an interesting character. He sometimes makes sweeping generalisations, which makes his writing even more real and not filtered.
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- potato3732842 2y agoIt's amazing to see pictures of feudal japan and think that some of the people who grew up there would be alive in the 1950s. Talk about witnessing progress.
- trhway 2y agoKeiko Fukuda, a judo trainer (10th degree black belt) in SF who died in 2013 aged 99 (she taught in her dojo in Noe Valley even into the last year of her life) was the student of the judo founder Kano Jigoro who opened his first judo school in 1882.
- throwaway2037 2y agoThank you to share. I didn't know about her. There is a detailed Wiki page about her life here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keiko_Fukuda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keiko_Fukuda
- radpanda 2y agoThat’s how I feel about present day humanity with regards to computer tech. I was born around the time of the 8086; my parents never really became fluent with computers. I was a nerd and got into computers as a teen, soon enough I had internet and then WiFi and now frickin smartphones hooked into LLMs. We’re the Information Age equivalent of those folks who spanned all the from the feudal era to riding Honda motorbikes.
- prawn 2y agoI'm possibly a similar vintage and enjoy telling my kids about changes that have happened within my lifetime, and not just things I've read of. TVs without remotes, to corded remotes, to normal remotes, all-in-one things, remotes with touch pads, everyone watching shows on personal devices with touchscreens, etc. Or from rotary phones to corded to cordless to early mobile phones, to what they're familiar with now. Record players, rewinding cassette tapes with a pencil, recording songs from radio, carrying around CDs with your Discman, minidiscs, MP3s, streaming. Such an interesting and wide series of changes. Meanwhile, earlier this week my otherwise-clever 12 yo tried to pinch zoom a paper map...
- bhaney 2y agoNikkō Road seems like it would have flooding issues. I wonder how they avoided that.
- mongol 2y agoGoes without saying, all the people on these photos are now all dead. And their children too. Zooming in and studying their faces, it strikes me how similar we are to them, and yet so different.
- Aeolun 2y agoWe are not different. The world is. I guarantee you those people had the exact same hopes and dreams we have now.
- tkgally 2y agoThat's a nice collection of photographs. Here are some written accounts of Japan during that period: https://www.gally.net/jatsi/index.html https://www.gally.net/jatsi/index.html
- userbinator 2y agoIn case anyone is wondering whether these are real colour photographs, the answer is no: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand-colouring#Japanese_hand-coloured_photographs_(circa_1860–1899) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand-colouring#Japanese_hand-c...
- nearting 2y agoAnd it's also mentioned in the third paragraph: > They were originally shot in black and white, then hand-coloured by artists — a technique common at the time.
- boomboomsubban 2y agoI can't tell from that, was the photographer generally the painter? Or was the painter at least present when the photograph was taken?
- mitthrowaway2 2y agoBased on the accurate coloration of the Yomei-mon gate at Nikko, the painter must have been familiar enough with the photo subjects.
- srik 2y agoThey’re lovely, thank you!
- throwup238 2y agoIt looks like the other blog post linked to about the photos of the Russian Empire is behind a paywall, but the original Prokudin-Gorskii collection is available for free at the Library of Congress: https://www.loc.gov/collections/prokudin-gorskii/about-this-collection/ https://www.loc.gov/collections/prokudin-gorskii/about-this-... Unlike these photographs from Japan, the ones from the Russian Empire were made with colored photographic plates and they were reassembled into true color photos and restored in the last few decades. Sadly the photos from the Monsen American west collection seem to be guarded closely by Princeton and are not viewable to the public without requesting physical access. https://findingaids.princeton.edu/catalog/C1539 https://findingaids.princeton.edu/catalog/C1539 Edit: Looks like much of the Monsen Ethnographic Indian Photographs Portfolio can be found in the Huntington digital library: https://hdl.huntington.org/digital/collection/p15150coll2/search/searchterm/Monsen https://hdl.huntington.org/digital/collection/p15150coll2/se... - content warning!
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- decimalenough 2y agoHaving visited last year, the scenery around Toshogu Shrine in Nikko isn't all that different, if you manage to visit like we did first thing in the morning as soon as they open and before the tour buses rock up. (The shrine is surrounded by acres of sacred forest where construction is prohibited.) The cities like Kobe and Nagasaki, on the other hand, are completely unrecognizable.
- RataNova 2y agoNikko really does feel like stepping back in time if you catch it early enough
- ekianjo 2y ago> The cities like Kobe and Nagasaki, on the other hand, are completely unrecognizable. getting utterly destroyed by fire bombing (or atomic bombs in the case of Nagasaki) does that to cities.
- decimalenough 2y agoKyoto was never bombed, but outside a very few carefully curated touristy bits, it's still an ugly AF concrete jungle that looks nothing like these pictures.
- dudeinjapan 2y ago[dead]
- ekianjo 2y agoNot the central part of Kyoto. You can walk in areas like Gion that have mostly remained the same for centuries. Of course as cities get bigger you get concrete. just like other cities Kyoto has grown in the 20th century and at some point you need concrete instead of wood
- decimalenough 2y agoGion and Sannenzaka are the very definition of touristy Kyoto.
- canpan 2y agoQuite a few of those still exist! * Wysteria Vine. It is not written, but I am pretty sure it's Kameido Shrine. You need to come at the right time to see flowers like that though. * Nikko All pictures that show shrine and pagoda * Osaka Castle * Daibutsu, at Kamakura * Jinrikishia Now it's for tourists, but you can ride in Asakusa. * View Ojigoku on Great Boiling Springs, Hakone. * Wrestlers. Sumo still exists and looks like that. * Gion Machi Street, at Kyoto. Looks a bit different, but there are still many old houses like this. * View of Nara. * Tennojo Buddhist Temple * Hakone Lake of Fujiyama What does not exist anymore is any picture showing a town or village. I feel sad about this. There are a very few places that kept this (E.g. Shirakawago). Now all houses look boring. Only recently people thought to build pretty houses again.
- imp0cat 2y agoYeah, Nikko still looks pretty much the same, just with a lot more people.
- ekianjo 2y agoOsaka Castle is a reconstruction. It's an empty shell, almost like a movie decor at this stage. If you want to see a real castle, there's the Himeji castle not too far from there.
- canpan 2y agoYou are absolutely right. The inside of Osaka castle is now concrete or something. But the outside and castle grounds still look like the article picture. Himeji castle is a great recommendation.
- gibagger 2y agoUnfortunately those pretty houses come at a cost. Traditional materials and techniques usually come at a price. Lots of wood and joinery work needs to be done, much of it by hand. They are also not well insulated so hard to keep warm in winter. They're so pretty though!. You can still see a few of these houses and their traditional gardens in some of the wealthy, old-money smelling parts of Kyoto.
- inatreecrown2 2y agoLovely pictures, especially liked the one of the room with the carpet, tea set, and table at the window. Everything low on the floor.
- mc3301 2y agoLots and lots of Japanese homes and apartments are like this, today. "Floor life," I like to call it.
- hoseyor 2y ago[flagged]
- autoexec 2y ago> This reminds me that we are all losing our unique and diverse cultures and humanity through the incessant drive of globalist world domination to force everyone to do and be the same We're actually creating new unique and diverse cultures by adopting and remixing parts of the various cultures we encounter. Just looking at photos from other cultures (as you have done today) is a part of that process. This is a good thing. Some of my favorite things are different takes on a thing that came from another culture. Diversity really does make us stronger and it makes our lives richer. While it might be neat to see what results from cultures being totally isolated, I think it'd be much more interesting to see what results from bringing those cultures together. The truth is that none of those "unique and diverse cultures" you're mourning the loss of came from anything different. Even japan's culture, although it was one of the more isolationist nations, was still massively influenced by other people/places. Technology accelerates the process, but the process itself is unchanged. It made 19th century japan what it was then, just like it made japan what it is now. It's just what humans do and always have done. There's no reason to feel sad about it.
- woolion 2y agoYour comments reminds me one time I discussed with a university professor about how evil the eradication of the biosphere diversity was (wildlife but also unique breeds with century-long histories), and he replied that we'd have a "less bloated, more efficient biosphere".
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- yannis 2y agoI agree diversity makes us richer, and historically there was always cultural diffusion, what I lament though is that this is now partially done by multinational corporations, wiping out local traditions.
- DeathArrow 2y ago>I’m once again struck by the fact that none of the people in these images are still with us. If any of them somehow returned to the land of the living, I’m not sure they’d recognise the Japan of today. On the other hand, if someone sees one of this pictures without any explanation, he will recognize it's made in Japan. I think Japan changed, but not so much.
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoJapan still is pretty isolationist or culturally conservative; I have no firsthand experience so this is all hearsay, but I gather the people living there are under a lot of societal / cultural pressure in how to behave, speak, live, etc. Foreigners get some leeway because they're foreign, but that's probably not so different wherever you go.
- ekianjo 2y ago> I think Japan changed, but not so much. I have read a book written in the early 20th century by an American at that time who had spent most of his life in Japan and who described what life was life was in Japan at the time. If you remove the technological change, culturally and traditionally, Japan is pretty much the same country as several generations back, and I was struck by that.
- DeathArrow 2y agoWhat amazes me is the quality of these pictures. Are they digitally restored?
- ekianjo 2y agofilm photography had a lot more detail until we moved to cheap 35mm film for cost and convenience reasons. Even middle format has a huge effective resolution,
- RataNova 2y agoThere's something about seeing real people from that far back
- NKosmatos 2y agoIt would be great if there were photos of today for some of these old photos, especially for structures/places/scenery that still exists.
- informal007 2y agoIt's like painting made by human, not photo captured by camera.
- voidUpdate 2y agoWhat surprised me the most is the picture of the Buddhist Monks. I've always associated them with those orange robes, but the patchwork of bright colours almost makes me think of a kids show host. Is this something that has evolved over time, or is it like a rank thing? Apologies for my ignorance
- pilaf 2y agoThese photos look colorized. Likely not the original colors of those robes.
- voidUpdate 2y agoAs stated in TFA, the pictures were originally black and white and were colourised at the time. I cant find a record of who colourised them or when, but it sems to me like they were colourised shortly after by the original photographer, and as such the colours would be reasonably accurate. You can see lightness and texture changes that would imply to me that there were changes in the material at the time of the picture being taken, even if it was colourised incorrectly
- pilaf 2y agoThere are several other colorized versions of that same photo online, all with very different color choices, so I wouldn't be too sure about the accuracy of TFA's version: https://www.meijishowa.com/photography/6451/190102-0009-pp-buddhist-priests https://www.meijishowa.com/photography/6451/190102-0009-pp-b... https://sekiei.nichibun.ac.jp/KSA/en/detail/?gid=G0203359 https://sekiei.nichibun.ac.jp/KSA/en/detail/?gid=G0203359 https://www.album-online.com/detail/en/NDAzZGUwMA/two-buddhist-monks-their-way-monastery-buddhism-priest-c-1870-alb9824891 https://www.album-online.com/detail/en/NDAzZGUwMA/two-buddhi... There's also more information about the exact version from the article here [1], although it doesn't clarify whether the photographer and the person who colorized it are separate people. 1: https://sova.si.edu/record/fsa.a1999.35/ref484 https://sova.si.edu/record/fsa.a1999.35/ref484
- uasi 2y ago
- prmph 2y agoThe color detail of these pictures is so detailed and beautiful. Were they really hand colored? The color absolutely looks like something that would be computer generated. If they were indeed hand colored (when?), that would be an absolutely massive amount of painstaking work.
- FalseNutrition 2y agoThey were dyed, rather than painted. The details come from the photograph.
- sandworm101 2y agoThey look like a video game. There arent enough NPCs. These are idealized images, akin to tourist photos. The seem to be taken in the early morning, before the crowds of people appear. The bell is perhaps the best example. Just think of the industry needed to mine and forge all that metal. These streets should be crammed with people but it looks like a town from Oblivion: massive constructions inhabited by a handful of residents. These are great photos, somewhat limited by the camera tech of the time, but I would like to see more typical scenes.
- MrRed 2y agoYou'll probably enjoy this project https://hikaria.org/ https://hikaria.org/ we have been working on with the Guimet museum in Paris (https://www.guimet.fr/fr https://www.guimet.fr/fr) to showcase 19th century Japanese photos. We are building that website to oroganize various collections, and allow users to search through them using object detection (Clip model)
- FalseNutrition 2y agoIt doesn't work. The photos don't load.
- geokon 2y agoThe scenes really remind me of the painting "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Along_the_River_During_the_Qingming_Festival https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Along_the_River_During_the_Qin... The juxtaposition really brings out how isolationist they were back then. A country that is like a time capsule to the Tang dynasty It's like if there was an island full of people still wearing Roman togas and going to the local hippodrome
- ListeningPie 2y agoWhat a difference presentation makes. On Ops link I could enjoy scrolling through the photos, to see them on the Smithsonian site ,I had to find the "See all digital content in FSA.A1999.35" link then 4 clicks for each photo from a harsh index page. Thank you to makers for putting the sites together, one for storage and the other for consumption.
- tempodox 2y agoBeautiful. That must have been a lot of work hand-coloring those photos.
- KPGv2 2y agoIf this tickles your pickle, there's a beautiful, large book put out by Taschen called Japan 1900 that you might want to check out! I have a copy and I love it. It just can't actually go on my coffee table since I have three kids under ten running around throwing juice and crumbs and handprints everywhere. https://www.taschen.com/en/books/photography/41412/japan-1900-a-portrait-in-color https://www.taschen.com/en/books/photography/41412/japan-190...
- gramie 2y agoIt's interesting that in the photo of three girls, they are smiling broadly. I had thought that traditional Japanese culture (and still, often, today) women tended to cover their mouths, and displaying teeth was considered somewhat vulgar or even obscene. At one point, women even blackened their teeth! Maybe that wasn't universal, or the photographer convinced the women to show their smiles.
- layer8 2y agoI don’t think that was generally the case. Your comment reminds me of this 1937 footage I saw recently: https://youtu.be/o4xkucZ40Fw?t=1m50s https://youtu.be/o4xkucZ40Fw?t=1m50s
- WalterBright 2y ago> I’m once again struck by the fact that none of the people in these images are still with us. Sometimes I think about that when watching an older movie.
- johnea 2y agoWow! Spectacular images! Seeing the captured images, instead of drawings or verbal description, is such a window back in time.
- danans 2y agoThe mailman had a pretty wild costume
- mvk666 2y agowow, my great grandfather fought in WWI, got captured and went through Russia, Japan, Hawaii, Panama and back to Europe. He collected postcards like these, we still have them
- maxtaqo 2y agoGhibli's films, especially Neighbour Totoro, depict Japan in the 1960s, and it is often muttered by old people after watching Hayao Miyazaki's films that this was the best point of landscape and modern affluence.
- thewileyone 2y agoStriking how clean and organized everything looks in the photos. It's really ingrained in the Japanese psyche.