Paper short abstract:

The paper will look at the spread and usage of photographic technologies in early Meiji Japan. I will discuss the rise of domestic photo studios and their specific practices in the 1860s-1870s, focusing especially on Cartes de Visite as a medium that was widely in use and gained enormous popularity.

Paper long abstract:

After some initial problems, photography surprisingly quickly took hold in Japanese society. Only about 15 years after the first successful daguerreotype had been produced in Japan, it seems that the new medium was already widely in use: In 1874, the first magazine devoted to photography is published, and in 1876, the Tōkyō shashin mitate kurabe lists over 130 professional photo studios operating in Tokyo.

Keeping in mind that, in the mid-19th century, the new photographic technologies were still enormously time and labour intensive, and required elaborate equipment, one is tempted to ask, what these photo studios were producing and selling? Who were their customers? Which products were in such demand to keep 130 photo studios in business in Tokyo alone?

We can only give tentative answers to these questions. Whereas the protagonists and products connected with the so-called yokohama shashin, souvenir photography produced mainly for a foreign market, have received heightened scholarly attention over the past few decades, we know far less about how photography took hold in Japanese society in the 19th century, by which agents it was employed for which purposes, and by which routes the new medium spread in domestic contexts.

Comprehensive answers to these questions can only be given by looking at a variety of contexts and phenomena: the spread and use of photography was driven by a variety of factors, including the employment of photography by governmental agencies, and changes in the new photographic technologies themselves.

I will approach the topic by looking at the rise of domestic commercial photo studios, and especially at the spread of Cartes de Visite in the period from the 1860s to the 1870s in Japan. I will argue that photo studios were the agents who acted as the mediators between photography and "the public" and the ones who furthered the dissemination of photography in everyday life. Looking at the Carte de Visite, circulated through a variety of social channels and networks, will not only provide insights into the everyday use of the emerging photographic technologies, but also into the attitudes with which they were greeted by the Japanese public.