Post: #1

Not sure if this has been posted before (search for "japan photo" didn't yield anything) but stumbled across these old-school pics of Meiji-era to pre-WWII Japan (no affiliation):

http://www.meijishowa.com/japan/4666/vin...s-of-japan



Geisha entertaining at a restaurant



1890s fisherman with those Japanese tattoos everyone has these days



Sumo match



"Modern" bathing suits at the time (1910s)

Hope everyone enjoys the holidays

Post: #2

WB and WB.

Nah, but seriously, I always find it a bit eerie to look at photos of young people who have been dead for a long time. Especially when it's not an official portrait but people doing random everyday things, like going swimming as in the above example. You see them in the prime of their lives but you know they've been dead for such a long time, that it really hammers home how ephemeral life is.

Post: #3

reminds me of family photos (canada not japan) from the same time period 1890s and 1910s. They are like time machines. Especially glaring to me is a picture of family leaving the house in a horse and buggy parked in the same spot that we now park the car.

Post: #4

Some of my relatives in Tokyo were among the first people in Japan to have cameras. There were of course the anthropologists, but for photos of the day to day stuff they have some of the earliest photos of life in Tokyo.

I did not have access to a high quality scanner but next time I plan to scan a lot of the photos. Some are in museums, but for the ones just sitting in albums I want to document them in digital as the paper is getting quite damages from age.

The one thing that stood out to me more than anything is how much respect there was toward the family patriarch. In almost every photo he had the look of a king, sitting in his kimono with his family on guard. The little boys were either in military type dress or in kimono/ yukata. The little girls always in kimono.

It really was an interesting time to peek into, before the wars with Russia and then the Allies. Another interesting thing was still how clean Tokyo was. In all the photos the streets were swept and spotless, the peoples homes and gardens meticulously maintained. The pride was apparent from an early age right through to very old age.

Post: #5

Those are some incredible pictures, thanks for sharing.

How bizarre it must have been for the first foreigners when they traveled to Japan up until the 1800s and even into the 1940s before WW2. I remember the culture shock I felt when I moved there in the 90s - what a difference a few decades can make. Now look at the Japanese...













Too bad their men are far more feminized. Strange, it's almost as if Japan is calling me back to plunder their women... can't resist the yellow fever...

Post: #6

In the picture, they are like any other friendly people photos taken from rural areas of Africa, South America and South East Asia in current time.

But how many western photographer ever imagined these people would attack pearl harbor and behead people with their samurai sword like IS?