Photographing the Ogasawara Islands: thinking with 19th century photographs of Japan

Abstract

Early Japanese photography - like so many other elements of Japanese modernity - has often been considered a mere by-product of interaction between western technical know-how and traditional Japanese aesthetics. Academic approaches to understanding the photography of Meiji Japan (1868-1912) have likewise been hampered by what could be called an isolated aesthetics, where images are divorced from their social context even as they are mined for 'evidence' in what they purportedly tell us about Japanese history or customs.