cover image Early Japanese Images

Early Japanese Images

Terry Bennett. Tuttle Publishing, $39.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-8048-2029-5

English author Bennett (Japan: Caught in Time), who owns a business devoted to early Japanese printed matter, notes that for some 30 years after photography's invention in Europe, serious photography in Japan was largely the work of globe-trotting Europeans fascinated by Japan's exotic vistas and customs. By the 1860s, however, Japan's own camera artists had produced major work, preeminently Kusakabe Kimbei of Yokohama and Tokyo's Tamamura Kozaburo. In the representative selection presented here-largely in the sepia tones and hand-coloring of the period-we see shrines and Buddhas, harbor views, artisans at work, fire-fighters, tattooed men, warriors in armor, along with the Emperor Meiji and his empress, a Samurai council, bathing scenes both public and private and ""teahouse"" women in sensual embrace. A highly specialized subject of antiquarian interest. (Mar.)