Figure 1.-- This Japanese CDV is dated December 1893 on the back. It shows there Japanese sublings, two girls and a boy, 6-10 years of age. Teyare Fuku 6 years, Jemi 8 years, and Fujio 9 years almost 10 years old. The format is just like Western photogrphs, but the dark maroon color was more common in the 1870s and 80s in the West. We see it throughout the 90s in Japan. Note the use of English script. We think that this was seen as modern and stylish. The back mixed Japanese character and English. The studio was S. Takebayashi in Tokyo. Ichibanchō is an upscale residential district of Chiyoda in Tokyo near the Imperial Palace.

Albumen prints appeared in Japan at about the same time they did in the West (1860s), probably a few years later. They were mostly done as CDVs and cabinet cards. We are not yet sure just how common CDVs and cabinet cards were in Japan. We have been able to find relatively few 19th century CDVs and cabinet cards. We do not think that photography in general was as common as in Euripe and certainly less common than in America. Here economics must be a central issue. Japan while industrializing and more prosperous than the rest of Asia, was not nearly as prosperous as America and Europe. Thus fewer people could afford photographic portraits. As to formats Our initial assessment is that CDVs were not as common as in Europe. We have found more cbinet cards. This is, however, just an initial assessment. We are not yet sure if our archive is an accurate reflection of actual prevalence, but as HBC expands in research effort, we are increasingly coming to this conclusion. We note more alnumen cards than Ambrotype, but not nearly as many as in the West. We suspect that while CDVs and cabinet cards were less expensive than Ambros, they were still too expenive for most Japanese workers in the 19th century because the country was just beginning to industrialize and much of the population was still peasant farmers who earned very little. The styles of the cabinet card mounts were similar to those we see in America and Europe. Many of the CDV mounts look like the cabinet card mounts. The time-lne may be slightly differnt. Many of these prints we have found are portraits of affluent families and by the 20th century school portraits. CDVs and cabinet cards were made over several decades. Interstingly, much of the the script on the cards is in English and not just Japanese.

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Created: 10:20 AM 4/10/2016
Last updated: 10:20 AM 4/10/2016