Susan Tehon Collection of Japanese Photographs and Ephemera, approximately 1880s-1940s

Photography in Japan can be traced to 1848, when a Dutch ship first brought a camera to the port of Nagasaki. At this time, Japan was in its Edo period, which was characterized by isolation from trade with other countries, with the exception of a few foreign nationals like the Dutch.

Once Japan opened its doors to foreign countries in the 1850s, cameras and other creative information and ideas began pouring into the country. However, though the Japanese immediately began experimenting with photography on their own, the first photo albums were actually sold by foreign visitors, like Italian photographer Felice Beato. But with the transition from the isolated Edo period to the more progressive and creatively driven Meiji era, many Japanese began setting up photo studios, and specializing in the country's first popular genre of photography: portraiture.

Among the first professional Japanese photographers were Ueno Hikoma and Shimooka Renjo, who opened their studios in 1862. Some of these studios, like Tomishige studio in Kumamnoto, Kyushu prefecture, were owned by the same family for generations, offering a rare record of the photographic history of the country, with the personal flair added by a family's unique creative processes. Most photographic equipment was imported directly from the West, but Japanese photographers also created their own closely related equipment and combined Western backgrounds with traditional Japanese scenes for use in portraiture. Consumers would most often express their individual preferences to influence the overall look of the final product.

Nearly all supplies had to be imported until the late 1870s, when Japan began producing their own photographic materials. This led to occasional supply uncertainties and long waits for products. The dry-plate process, which was introduced in Japan in the early 1880s, greatly simplified the photographic process and allowed for greater access to the medium and distribution.

In the late nineteenth century, enlargers were not yet used, so the camera and negative size dictated the size of the resulting print. The most common portrait photo sizes produced by Japanese studios were the carte-de-visite (approximately 2 x3 inches), the quarter-plate (4 1/4 x 3 1/4 inches), and the cabinet (4 3/4 x 6 ½ inches). Landscapes and large portraits were often quarter-plate, cabinet, 10 x 12 inches, or larger. Measurements often varied since negative plates were cut by hand. Portraits would typically have a larger cardboard mount with the studio's insignia on the bottom and/or the reverse. Studio settings varied.

To have one's photograph taken in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in Japan was at times prohibitively expensive (records from the Tomishige studio prove that a single sitting for an individual would run hundreds of American dollars today.) Because of this, and due to the fact that reprints were often as expensive as the original sitting, many Japanese citizens would cherish portraits taken at studios as precious family heirlooms, and would often only have the means to be photographed perhaps once in a lifetime.

A note on how these photographs were dated: Many of these photos did not contain specific dates or writing that spoke to time period. Instead, clothing and hair styles were studied in order to determine a range of dates using world fashion. Though traditional dress is worn in the majority of the photos, beginning in the Meiji period (1868-1912), the people of Japan began to incorporate elements of Western fashion into their everyday lives. A date range was determined by the presence of these Western fashion elements as well as popular Japanese hairstyles.