Welcome to Cosmographia — a newsletter dedicated to exploring the world and our place in it. For the full map of posts, see here.
After speaking with
earlier this week, I have found myself sitting at my desk here in Edinburgh dreaming of Japan.As such, I decided to see if I couldn’t travel there vicariously through art. I began rooting around the archives of various museums and galleries until I came across this gem of a collection of 19th century photographs.
These pictures, the work of several different photographers, were assembled by a pair of collectors named Henry and Nancy Rosin. They were originally shot in black and white, then hand-coloured by artists — a technique common at the time. All were taken between the years 1860-1900, meaning the earliest of them just predates the Meiji Restoration, when the last shōgun still ruled Japan.
As with our look at old photos of the Russian Empire and the American West, 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.
The world of dew — A world of dew it is indeed, And yet, and yet...— Kobayashi Issa (1817)
(All images courtesy of Henry and Nancy Rosin Collection of Early Photography of Japan. FSA.A1999.35. National Museum of Asian Art Archives. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.)
