[HN Gopher] Photographs of 19th Century Japan
___________________________________________________________________
Photographs of 19th Century Japan
Author : merothwell
Score : 420 points
Date : 2025-04-09 12:20 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (cosmographia.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (cosmographia.substack.com)
| kappasan wrote:
| Cool photos! My workplace is an old machiya [1] in Kyoto that's
| more than a hundred years old, so I kinda live like the people in
| these photos (not really of course - no konbini back then).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machiya
| xandrius wrote:
| A friend of mine also recently redid a machiya in Kyoto. It
| even had the godness mask near the ceiling, amazing.
|
| Side note: I quickly checked the dedede project and I'm so
| enthralled with it! I will use it to improve my Japanese, thank
| you!
| kappasan wrote:
| Thanks so much for checking out the website! I hear machiya
| are quickly disappearing in Kyoto (often turned into generic
| apartments) so it's great to hear your friend is keeping the
| old city alive.
| helaoban wrote:
| What did we do to our world.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| In some ways we made it better and in some ways we made it
| worse.
| qiqitori wrote:
| There was nothing to do back then. And if there was, it was
| crazy and/or reserved for the feudal lords. The primary income
| of the state was through alcohol taxes. Countries thought it
| was okay to invade other countries just to make themselves
| bigger/stronger countries. Nationalism, racism, sexism were the
| norm. Most people can't read/write. Information is scant and
| passed on by word of mouth.
| qiqitori wrote:
| (Re-reading what I wrote above, I'd like to clarify that all
| the stuff I wrote above (except perhaps the alcohol tax one?)
| is of course not specific to Japan.)
| JPLeRouzic wrote:
| Thanks for the insight, but _how it is different from today_?
|
| - Countries now thought it IS okay to invade other countries
| just to make themselves bigger/stronger countries: There are
| currently many examples in the news.
|
| - Nationalism, racism, sexism are the norm: Nationalism is
| obviously on the rise. Racism never disappeared, even being
| tattooed is seen as an excuse to deport people.
|
| https://azmirror.com/2025/04/08/ice-director-envisions-
| amazo...
|
| - Women and men are much more sexualized today than in my
| youth, despite the talk of feminism and #metoo.
|
| - Most people can't read/write (see Piza results). Only 10%
| of people can understand a simple statistics.
|
| - Information is scant (see social networks and
| disinformation)
|
| For context, about my post, I am from France, and what I
| wrote is not specific to any country but seems to me to apply
| to all.
| freetime2 wrote:
| Interesting, my reaction to these photos was "no thank you".
| It's fun to have a glimpse at the past, but I have no desire to
| live back then.
|
| In particular I'm happy to live in a modern, well-insulated
| home with climate control. Transportation is also a lot more
| convenient with cars, trains, and airplanes. And clothing and
| fashion of the day also looks very uncomfortable to me.
|
| Some of the nature scenes look lovely. But there are still
| plenty of places in Japan where you can experience the same
| sense of natural beauty and solitude.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| In ~150 years someone will pick some photos taken today and
| post them and someone will probably wonder the same thing. Go
| out and do some sightseeing - a lot of the sights in these
| photos still exist, but also, you look at these photos with
| different eyes than the people that grew up there do; changing
| how you look at your own environment or places of interest will
| probably also help.
| rsynnott wrote:
| These photos are, ah, not representative (most historical
| artefacts of this type aren't; part of why people tend to have
| an impression of Victorian London as basically hell on earth is
| that, unusually, photos _were_ taken of the nasty bits, but
| really it was no worse than anywhere else at the time).
|
| You'd certainly prefer to live in Japan in 2025 than in 1860.
| low_tech_punk wrote:
| The photo titled "Thief, outside of mosquito-net." really piqued
| my interest.
| colordrops wrote:
| Thief with a katana...
| amiga386 wrote:
| It could be worse.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsujigiri
|
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NDL-
| DC_1301844_Toyoh...
| colordrops wrote:
| That's messed up.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| What is the story of the 'letter carrier'?
| BoingBoomTschak wrote:
| He carried letters.
| Aloisius wrote:
| It's a staged photograph by Kimbei Kusakabe (or Baron Raimund
| von Stillfried, they sold each other's works a lot and Kusakabe
| worked for Stillfried at one point) of hikyaku (express
| couriers) created to sate Western desire for souvenirs of
| "real" Japan.
|
| They had long since disappeared by the time the photographs
| were taken, replaced with uniformed men on bicycles. In the
| past though, they ran express mail in relays with a partner who
| carried a torch.
| merothwell wrote:
| Fascinating
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Thanks. Are the tattoos, the scanty clothing and the somewhat
| (to my eyes) effeminate appearance anything to do with being
| a courier? Or just something to titillate postcard buyers?
| WastedCucumber wrote:
| I was curious about this too and did some searching. Found
| this source
|
| https://www.oldphotosjapan.com/photos/882/19th-century-
| japan...
|
| as well as the wikipedia page
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikyaku
|
| I didn't see anything about tattoos or the eye makeup, but
| the loincloth definitely came up. That was their typical
| clothing, regardless of weather, although I find kind of
| hard to believe.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Interesting.
|
| I wonder how easy it is to run distances carrying a pole?
|
| >I didn't see anything about tattoos or the eye makeup,
| but the loincloth definitely came up. That was their
| typical clothing, regardless of weather, although I find
| kind of hard to believe.
|
| Maybe that was just while they were running? And the way
| station provided some warm clothing when they stopped?
| xandrius wrote:
| And this stuff is why I love either super creative science
| fiction or travelogues (and the formers are hard to find).
|
| You can try to imagine a brand new world or simply try to re-live
| our real and past world. To me that is even more amazing, as it
| often can be the door to understanding some things of today's
| cultures and/or discover lost little worlds.
|
| Currently I'm going through this book of a guy who cycled across
| Central Asia and in Japan. The guy is sometimes quite direct in
| his writing (unlike other writers) but it's so interesting to
| experience the world of just 100-200 years ago through the lens
| of one living there. I truly recommend it.
| decimalenough wrote:
| Can you share the name & author of the book?
|
| I'll plug Wilfred Thesiger's Arabian Sands as an extraordinary
| deep dive into a world that's entirely disappeared in our
| lifetimes:
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/825419.Arabian_Sands
| imp0cat wrote:
| https://www.japanbiking.com/tours-2/previous-tours/thomas-
| st...
|
| Both books (not just Japan, he cycled around the world):
| https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/1710
| mc3301 wrote:
| Is it "Around the world on a bicycle"? I, too, would like to
| know the name of this book. Sounds interesting!
| xandrius wrote:
| Thomas Stevens, really an interesting character. He sometimes
| makes sweeping generalisations, which makes his writing even
| more real and not filtered.
| damnitbuilds wrote:
| One suspects "Bloody hell, car drivers are selfish
| bastards" sprung from his lips a couple of times.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Some video games try and do the former; I play too much FFXIV
| and a recurring theme there is that you go to a new area and
| you get the tourist's experience, tour the area, view the
| sights, meet the locals, figure out the local history and
| culture, etc.
|
| Sure, it's kind of superficial, usually based on human
| civilizations / design trends / etc; that is:
|
| * Heavensward: Europe / traditional knights and castles and
| church stuffs
|
| * Stormblood: East-Asia / Japan, clearly a favorite thing to
| work on from the developers
|
| * Shadowbringers: is actually pretty independent
|
| * Endwalker: Rome / Greece on the one side, India on the other,
| philosophical existential crises in the late game (that part is
| actually really good, they invented multiple (7-8 or so?)
| different civilizations who all achieved some kind of
| immortality and pursued the meaning of life, ending up
| disillusioned)
|
| * Dawntrail (latest): south & mesoamerica on the one side,
| cyberpunk sci-fi on the other
| xandrius wrote:
| Yeah, I saw that concept but I always feel like I'm supposed
| to be 6 years old to enjoy the interactions and the dialogue
| (both in FFXIV and FFXV). Also the "tourist moment" felt too
| much the canned tourist experience where everything is
| perfect, clean and everyone nice.
|
| Instead travelogues are not that, they are not about being
| perfect or beautiful, it's about the places and people being
| as they are, however they are.
|
| Didn't try all ths games you mentioned, I will take a look.
| Thanks!
| lproven wrote:
| > this book of a guy who cycled across Central Asia and in
| Japan
|
| Go on, give us a clue. Title, author, even language...?
| potato3732842 wrote:
| It's amazing to see pictures of feudal japan and think that some
| of the people who grew up there would be alive in the 1950s. Talk
| about witnessing progress.
| trhway wrote:
| Keiko Fukuda, a judo trainer (10th degree black belt) in SF who
| died in 2013 aged 99 (she taught in her dojo in Noe Valley even
| into the last year of her life) was the student of the judo
| founder Kano Jigoro who opened his first judo school in 1882.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Thank you to share. I didn't know about her. There is a
| detailed Wiki page about her life here:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keiko_Fukuda
| radpanda wrote:
| That's how I feel about present day humanity with regards to
| computer tech. I was born around the time of the 8086; my
| parents never really became fluent with computers. I was a nerd
| and got into computers as a teen, soon enough I had internet
| and then WiFi and now frickin smartphones hooked into LLMs.
| We're the Information Age equivalent of those folks who spanned
| all the from the feudal era to riding Honda motorbikes.
| prawn wrote:
| I'm possibly a similar vintage and enjoy telling my kids
| about changes that have happened within my lifetime, and not
| just things I've read of. TVs without remotes, to corded
| remotes, to normal remotes, all-in-one things, remotes with
| touch pads, everyone watching shows on personal devices with
| touchscreens, etc. Or from rotary phones to corded to
| cordless to early mobile phones, to what they're familiar
| with now. Record players, rewinding cassette tapes with a
| pencil, recording songs from radio, carrying around CDs with
| your Discman, minidiscs, MP3s, streaming. Such an interesting
| and wide series of changes.
|
| Meanwhile, earlier this week my otherwise-clever 12 yo tried
| to pinch zoom a paper map...
| bhaney wrote:
| Nikko Road seems like it would have flooding issues. I wonder how
| they avoided that.
| mongol wrote:
| Goes without saying, all the people on these photos are now all
| dead. And their children too. Zooming in and studying their
| faces, it strikes me how similar we are to them, and yet so
| different.
| Aeolun wrote:
| We are not different. The world is. I guarantee you those
| people had the exact same hopes and dreams we have now.
| tkgally wrote:
| That's a nice collection of photographs.
|
| Here are some written accounts of Japan during that period:
|
| https://www.gally.net/jatsi/index.html
| userbinator wrote:
| In case anyone is wondering whether these are real colour
| photographs, the answer is no:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand-colouring#Japanese_hand-c...
| nearting wrote:
| And it's also mentioned in the third paragraph:
|
| > They were originally shot in black and white, then hand-
| coloured by artists -- a technique common at the time.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| I can't tell from that, was the photographer generally the
| painter? Or was the painter at least present when the
| photograph was taken?
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Based on the accurate coloration of the Yomei-mon gate at
| Nikko, the painter must have been familiar enough with the
| photo subjects.
| srik wrote:
| They're lovely, thank you!
| throwup238 wrote:
| It looks like the other blog post linked to about the photos of
| the Russian Empire is behind a paywall, but the original
| Prokudin-Gorskii collection is available for free at the Library
| of Congress: https://www.loc.gov/collections/prokudin-
| gorskii/about-this-...
|
| Unlike these photographs from Japan, the ones from the Russian
| Empire were made with colored photographic plates and they were
| reassembled into true color photos and restored in the last few
| decades.
|
| Sadly the photos from the Monsen American west collection seem to
| be guarded closely by Princeton and are not viewable to the
| public without requesting physical access.
| https://findingaids.princeton.edu/catalog/C1539
|
| Edit: Looks like much of the Monsen Ethnographic Indian
| Photographs Portfolio can be found in the Huntington digital
| library:
| https://hdl.huntington.org/digital/collection/p15150coll2/se... -
| content warning!
| decimalenough wrote:
| Having visited last year, the scenery around Toshogu Shrine in
| Nikko isn't all that different, if you manage to visit like we
| did first thing in the morning as soon as they open and before
| the tour buses rock up. (The shrine is surrounded by acres of
| sacred forest where construction is prohibited.)
|
| The cities like Kobe and Nagasaki, on the other hand, are
| completely unrecognizable.
| RataNova wrote:
| Nikko really does feel like stepping back in time if you catch
| it early enough
| ekianjo wrote:
| > The cities like Kobe and Nagasaki, on the other hand, are
| completely unrecognizable.
|
| getting utterly destroyed by fire bombing (or atomic bombs in
| the case of Nagasaki) does that to cities.
| decimalenough wrote:
| Kyoto was never bombed, but outside a very few carefully
| curated touristy bits, it's still an ugly AF concrete jungle
| that looks nothing like these pictures.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Not the central part of Kyoto. You can walk in areas like
| Gion that have mostly remained the same for centuries. Of
| course as cities get bigger you get concrete. just like
| other cities Kyoto has grown in the 20th century and at
| some point you need concrete instead of wood
| decimalenough wrote:
| Gion and Sannenzaka are the very definition of touristy
| Kyoto.
| canpan wrote:
| Quite a few of those still exist!
|
| * Wysteria Vine. It is not written, but I am pretty sure it's
| Kameido Shrine. You need to come at the right time to see flowers
| like that though.
|
| * Nikko All pictures that show shrine and pagoda
|
| * Osaka Castle
|
| * Daibutsu, at Kamakura
|
| * Jinrikishia Now it's for tourists, but you can ride in Asakusa.
|
| * View Ojigoku on Great Boiling Springs, Hakone.
|
| * Wrestlers. Sumo still exists and looks like that.
|
| * Gion Machi Street, at Kyoto. Looks a bit different, but there
| are still many old houses like this.
|
| * View of Nara.
|
| * Tennojo Buddhist Temple
|
| * Hakone Lake of Fujiyama
|
| What does not exist anymore is any picture showing a town or
| village. I feel sad about this. There are a very few places that
| kept this (E.g. Shirakawago). Now all houses look boring. Only
| recently people thought to build pretty houses again.
| imp0cat wrote:
| Yeah, Nikko still looks pretty much the same, just with a lot
| more people.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Osaka Castle is a reconstruction. It's an empty shell, almost
| like a movie decor at this stage. If you want to see a real
| castle, there's the Himeji castle not too far from there.
| canpan wrote:
| You are absolutely right. The inside of Osaka castle is now
| concrete or something. But the outside and castle grounds
| still look like the article picture. Himeji castle is a great
| recommendation.
| gibagger wrote:
| Unfortunately those pretty houses come at a cost. Traditional
| materials and techniques usually come at a price. Lots of wood
| and joinery work needs to be done, much of it by hand. They are
| also not well insulated so hard to keep warm in winter. They're
| so pretty though!.
|
| You can still see a few of these houses and their traditional
| gardens in some of the wealthy, old-money smelling parts of
| Kyoto.
| SenHeng wrote:
| My next door neighbour lives in one of those thatched roof
| houses. I once visited in mid May, it was sweltering hot
| outside so I was in Tshirts and shorts. Inside, it was
| freezing! They had the kotatsu and a kerosene stove on.
| nottorp wrote:
| That's a feature these days!
| MisterTea wrote:
| You can certainly combine modern construction techniques with
| traditional looks. Don't expect 1:1 looks but you can make
| them less boring.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > Now all houses look boring. Only recently people thought to
| build pretty houses again.
|
| When I visited Japan last year most of my pictures were of old
| "crummy" looking buildings and older homes. They had character
| vs the modern flat buildings popping up all over. I even
| snapped pictures of the overhead wiring, utility poles and
| building connections. I now understand the prevalence of
| overhead wires and utility poles in manga/anime. I even read a
| white paper on Tepco's commitment to move as much of these old
| overhead wires underground.
| dkarl wrote:
| Speaking of "crummy," R. Crumb talked about an afternoon he
| spent driving around the suburbs in the 1980s taking pictures
| of houses, streets, and strip malls so he could draw
| realistic backgrounds for his comics.
|
| > "People don't draw it, all this crap, people don't focus
| attention on it because it's ugly, it's bleak, it's
| depressing," he says, "The stuff is not created to be
| visually pleasing and you can't remember exactly what it
| looks like. But, this is the world we live in; I wanted my
| work to reflect that, the background reality of urban life."
|
| https://time.com/3802766/r-crumbs-snapshots-source-
| material-...
|
| I don't have a reference for it (it might be from the film
| "Crumb") but I remember him saying that people would rave
| about how he artistically exaggerated the proliferation of
| poles, signage, and overhead lines to create over-the-top
| dystopian images, when he was just copying backgrounds from
| photographs of suburban California.
| inatreecrown2 wrote:
| Lovely pictures, especially liked the one of the room with the
| carpet, tea set, and table at the window. Everything low on the
| floor.
| mc3301 wrote:
| Lots and lots of Japanese homes and apartments are like this,
| today. "Floor life," I like to call it.
| hoseyor wrote:
| This reminds me that we are all losing our unique and diverse
| cultures and humanity through the incessant drive of globalist
| world domination to force everyone to do and be the same, while
| "diversity is our greatest strength" is piped over the
| megaphones, as diversity is crushed under corporate consolidation
| autoexec wrote:
| > This reminds me that we are all losing our unique and diverse
| cultures and humanity through the incessant drive of globalist
| world domination to force everyone to do and be the same
|
| We're actually creating new unique and diverse cultures by
| adopting and remixing parts of the various cultures we
| encounter. Just looking at photos from other cultures (as you
| have done today) is a part of that process. This is a good
| thing. Some of my favorite things are different takes on a
| thing that came from another culture. Diversity really does
| make us stronger and it makes our lives richer. While it might
| be neat to see what results from cultures being totally
| isolated, I think it'd be much more interesting to see what
| results from bringing those cultures together.
|
| The truth is that none of those "unique and diverse cultures"
| you're mourning the loss of came from anything different. Even
| japan's culture, although it was one of the more isolationist
| nations, was still massively influenced by other people/places.
| Technology accelerates the process, but the process itself is
| unchanged. It made 19th century japan what it was then, just
| like it made japan what it is now. It's just what humans do and
| always have done. There's no reason to feel sad about it.
| woolion wrote:
| Your comments reminds me one time I discussed with a
| university professor about how evil the eradication of the
| biosphere diversity was (wildlife but also unique breeds with
| century-long histories), and he replied that we'd have a
| "less bloated, more efficient biosphere".
| yannis wrote:
| I agree diversity makes us richer, and historically there was
| always cultural diffusion, what I lament though is that this
| is now partially done by multinational corporations, wiping
| out local traditions.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| > this is now partially done by multinational corporations,
| wiping out local traditions.
|
| And it used to be partially done by empires, wiping out
| local traditions. And powerful warlords would do it, too.
| Monarchs, etc. Hard to say Western Europe doesn't look the
| way it does in large part because of this multi
| _continental_ , millennia-old institution called the
| Catholic Church!
| yannis wrote:
| Agreed and besides Europe the Catholic Church destroyed
| much of the history of Mesoamerica. But, part of
| "culture" is our history as well, it just saddens me
| though thinking what we are going to leave behind for
| future generations.
| debesyla wrote:
| And even language itself changes how we think. We can
| blame the romans for making english the lingua franca.
| wahern wrote:
| Corporations are probably low down the list of drivers of
| cultural homogenization. Merely exporting (via social media,
| entertainment, cosmopolitan norms, etc) the Western conception
| of diversity as virtue, as well as the particular definition(s)
| du jour of diversity, is no less a form of cultural
| homogenization (or "colonization" using the parlance of some
| circles).
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| You're really underplaying how awful the life was for an
| average person in before-times. Sure, pretty buildings,
| different cultures, and etc. were more prominent. But also an
| average person would never be able to enjoy those in their
| lifetimes.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Not unlike how it went in a lot of places at the time; the
| problem with history is that they mainly focus on and make
| records of the upper echelons, the pretty parts. Few
| historians / writers / etc make notes of the common people.
| Some exceptions, of course, but you'd be forgiven for
| thinking Europe was mainly castles, knights and political
| intrigue back in the middle ages.
|
| It hasn't changed much; in theory everyone has a camera in
| their pocket now to record the mundane, but in practice a lot
| of it is "content", where people put on a show for the
| camera.
|
| My grandpa was an amateur photographer, he'd go out and make
| photos of local events, scenes, people, etc. His work has
| been donated to a regional museum and digitized, because
| there was little other visual records of these old (well,
| 50's) traditions.
|
| I can't find them though. Some were uploaded to a Facebook
| page but that's a really poor platform for archiving /
| displaying works. I should reach out to my dad and start a
| project to build a website for this collection or something
| like that.
| modo_mario wrote:
| Whether it's good or bad I feel like what you mention is
| partially besides the point no? As in prosperity might look
| different without the things influencing this cultural
| mixture but surely the argument would not be that we'd be
| living in the 1800's
| FalseNutrition wrote:
| I'm not buying this. All these claims rely on some nebulous
| "poor people" who were kept hidden away somewhere. There is
| no good reason to doubt that these photos show regular
| people, and the buildings they lived in.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| Both of my grandpas (who have passed away long ago), would
| beg to differ. People, especially when taking photos wasn't
| basically free, don't take photos of ordinary things. If
| you see 1 rose among 500 tulips, that will catch your eye.
| And vice versa.
|
| Poor people were not hidden away, it's just their lives
| weren't that beautiful to be shown and paraded around.
| ben_w wrote:
| Mm. When I go on holiday, I take notice of mundane things
| in the new place that are different to mundane things in my
| normal life. Street furniture, pylons, graffiti, the
| contents of supermarket shelves, dusty unpaved roads[0].
|
| But over the years I have come to realise that I'm _very
| odd_.
|
| When you go on holiday, how many photos do you take of
| regular people, vs. tourist attractions? Or, in reverse, do
| you know regular people[1] who often find tourists visiting
| their area like to take photos of their homes?
|
| [0] When I visited Nairobi a decade back, one of my photos
| was along the lines of this Google Street View image: https
| ://www.google.com/maps/@-1.2811367,36.9148575,3a,75y,17...
|
| [1] This site being what it is, there's a decent chance you
| know someone world-famous and people do actually want
| photos of their home. They're not "regular people".
| WalterBright wrote:
| My dad took quite a few pictures of everyday life in
| Japan after WW2, including everyday life on the military
| bases.
|
| The same during the Korean War he was a pilot in.
| nottorp wrote:
| Maybe, these being taken in the 19th century when
| photography was expensive, they were well off enough to
| afford paying for it?
| WalterBright wrote:
| I have a couple books full of photos of the Civil War.
| There are a lot of ordinary soldier and camp life pictures
| in it.
| i_v wrote:
| I just don't think that's true. This seems like a really
| pessimistic take. Is it truly "globalist world domination" --
| implying that our corporate overlords _want_ us to live like
| this? Or is it purely function and aesthetic? Capitalism puts
| power in the hands of consumers--sure, marketing has an
| influence--but also, we as consumers are the ultimate deciders.
| Cost, labor, and wealth. All are influences in the deciding of
| what we choose to buy. If what we have today is lifeless, I
| think it 's of our own collective choosing.
|
| To be fair though, these photos are breathtaking. Pre-
| industrial era Japan is a place I'd love to visit and the
| history of this transformation is steeped in fear, modernizing
| in response to Western powers (look up Matthew Perry--naval
| officer, not the actor lol).
| Timwi wrote:
| You can't be serious, right? As a consumer, where can I
| choose to buy a printer with no planned obsolescence? Or a
| food item with no plastic packaging? In capitalism we do not,
| in fact, have the power you describe, because only the most
| profitable products are sold at scale, not the most
| desirable.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| This is kind of an ironic comment as Japan was very
| isolationist - that is, resisting foreign influence, sticking
| to their own culture / traditions / etc - at least up until the
| time period of this photo, which is when the Meiji Restoration
| started and they opened up more to foreigners.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakoku
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiji_Restoration
| RataNova wrote:
| Cultures evolve, borrow, remix - that's always been true, even
| long before globalization. People still find ways to hold onto
| local traditions, stories, food, language - sometimes because
| the outside world feels so loud.
| modo_mario wrote:
| It happened at a tiny fraction of the speed it happens at now
| tbh. I'd say now it far surpasses the rate at which they
| differentiate to varying extent.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The thing is, Sakoku passim, you can't really prevent
| homogenization without entirely abandoning the 20th century
| (heck, 19th century!) travel revolution. You'd need a global
| ban on air travel, TV, and Internet.
|
| The alternative is a sort of re-enactment/cosplay approach
| where people consciously try to keep local traditions and
| minority languages (e.g. Gaelic, Sami) alive.
| antonkochubey wrote:
| Long distance traveling was invented much earlier than 20th
| and even 19th century.
| ziddoap wrote:
| Speed and scale of long-distance travel are obviously the
| relevant factors, not just "is it possible to go far".
|
| Air travel is faster than horse, and carries more people.
| ben_w wrote:
| Here's an isochrone -- travel time -- map from 1881,
| centred on London. Note the legend uses _tens of days_ to
| measure time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Isochronic
| _Passage_Chart_...
| damnitbuilds wrote:
| Hmm. If we want to preserve our diverse cultures, then we have
| to do more to defend our own cultures against immigrants
| imposing their cultures over them.
|
| How you do that without being outright racist is the tough
| part.
|
| And I say this as a migrated child of migrants.
| tjpnz wrote:
| Don't see much imposition in Japan and this year will mark
| ten years living here. People who can't or won't assimilate
| quickly find themselves living on another plane of existence
| and eventually leave. Language plays a big part with that
| too. If you can't speak Japanese or have someone with you who
| can there are countless everyday situations where you're SOL.
| damnitbuilds wrote:
| Yes.
|
| But is that a good thing?
|
| And if it is, should we be trying to promote it elsewhere
| where immigrant imposition does occur? And how?!
| yannis wrote:
| How do immigrants impose their cultures on a host country?
| Can you give some examples? Historically populations mix by
| migration, wars, slavery, and trading networks. It is a
| process that cannot be stopped, maybe slowed down or
| accelerated. The disappointing aspect of it, is now this
| process has been hijacked by corporations. How did the West
| acquire a culture of coffee or coffee-shops? Now is McDonalds
| and Costa Cafes.
| triceratops wrote:
| > we have to do more to defend our own cultures
|
| What does "defend" mean?
|
| > against immigrants imposing their cultures
|
| How can a minority "impose" its culture?
|
| > How you do that without being outright racist
|
| You can start by not saying "defending" and "imposing".
| There's no attack. "Defending" only means enjoying and
| promoting all the elements of your existing culture -
| language, music, entertainment, food, dress, architecture,
| religious and other traditional celebrations.
|
| Immigrants like to be part of the mainstream so most of them
| will participate, unless made to feel unwelcome, usually
| bringing some of their own food to the party (always a plus).
| TimedToasts wrote:
| Along a similar tangent - we are losing a lot of authenticity
| with the loss of culture. When the younger ones complain that
| 'nothing is real', this is a portion of what they mean.
|
| A big aspect of authenticity is uniqueness and modern culture
| and political thought are absolutely counter-aligned to this
| idea.
| WalterBright wrote:
| My dad was stationed in Japan after the war, and he enjoyed the
| Japanese culture. He brought home bits of it. I thought "zori"
| was an English word for many years. I still prefer it over
| flip-flops.
|
| He'd import culture from other places he was stationed. He
| adopted the German custom of an after-lunch nap, which I still
| do.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| >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.
|
| On the other hand, if someone sees one of this pictures without
| any explanation, he will recognize it's made in Japan.
|
| I think Japan changed, but not so much.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Japan still is pretty isolationist or culturally conservative;
| I have no firsthand experience so this is all hearsay, but I
| gather the people living there are under a lot of societal /
| cultural pressure in how to behave, speak, live, etc.
| Foreigners get some leeway because they're foreign, but that's
| probably not so different wherever you go.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > I think Japan changed, but not so much.
|
| I have read a book written in the early 20th century by an
| American at that time who had spent most of his life in Japan
| and who described what life was life was in Japan at the time.
| If you remove the technological change, culturally and
| traditionally, Japan is pretty much the same country as several
| generations back, and I was struck by that.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| What amazes me is the quality of these pictures. Are they
| digitally restored?
| ekianjo wrote:
| film photography had a lot more detail until we moved to cheap
| 35mm film for cost and convenience reasons. Even middle format
| has a huge effective resolution,
| RataNova wrote:
| There's something about seeing real people from that far back
| NKosmatos wrote:
| It would be great if there were photos of today for some of these
| old photos, especially for structures/places/scenery that still
| exists.
| informal007 wrote:
| It's like painting made by human, not photo captured by camera.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| What surprised me the most is the picture of the Buddhist Monks.
| I've always associated them with those orange robes, but the
| patchwork of bright colours almost makes me think of a kids show
| host. Is this something that has evolved over time, or is it like
| a rank thing? Apologies for my ignorance
| pilaf wrote:
| These photos look colorized. Likely not the original colors of
| those robes.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| As stated in TFA, the pictures were originally black and
| white and were colourised at the time. I cant find a record
| of who colourised them or when, but it sems to me like they
| were colourised shortly after by the original photographer,
| and as such the colours would be reasonably accurate. You can
| see lightness and texture changes that would imply to me that
| there were changes in the material at the time of the picture
| being taken, even if it was colourised incorrectly
| uasi wrote:
| Patchwork robes and non-orange clothes are common in Japanese
| Buddhism. The styles and colors vary significantly depending on
| the sect and one's rank.[1]
|
| [1]
| https://www2.ntj.jac.go.jp/dglib/contents/learn/edc28/shiru/...
| prmph wrote:
| The color detail of these pictures is so detailed and beautiful.
| Were they really hand colored? The color absolutely looks like
| something that would be computer generated. If they were indeed
| hand colored (when?), that would be an absolutely massive amount
| of painstaking work.
| FalseNutrition wrote:
| They were dyed, rather than painted. The details come from the
| photograph.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| They look like a video game. There arent enough NPCs. These are
| idealized images, akin to tourist photos. The seem to be taken in
| the early morning, before the crowds of people appear. The bell
| is perhaps the best example. Just think of the industry needed to
| mine and forge all that metal. These streets should be crammed
| with people but it looks like a town from Oblivion: massive
| constructions inhabited by a handful of residents. These are
| great photos, somewhat limited by the camera tech of the time,
| but I would like to see more typical scenes.
| MrRed wrote:
| You'll probably enjoy this project https://hikaria.org/ we have
| been working on with the Guimet museum in Paris
| (https://www.guimet.fr/fr) to showcase 19th century Japanese
| photos.
|
| We are building that website to oroganize various collections,
| and allow users to search through them using object detection
| (Clip model)
| geokon wrote:
| The scenes really remind me of the painting "Along the River
| During the Qingming Festival"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Along_the_River_During_the_Qin...
|
| The juxtaposition really brings out how isolationist they were
| back then. A country that is like a time capsule to the Tang
| dynasty
|
| It's like if there was an island full of people still wearing
| Roman togas and going to the local hippodrome
| ListeningPie wrote:
| What a difference presentation makes. On Ops link I could enjoy
| scrolling through the photos, to see them on the Smithsonian site
| ,I had to find the "See all digital content in FSA.A1999.35" link
| then 4 clicks for each photo from a harsh index page.
|
| Thank you to makers for putting the sites together, one for
| storage and the other for consumption.
| tempodox wrote:
| Beautiful. That must have been a lot of work hand-coloring those
| photos.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| If this tickles your pickle, there's a beautiful, large book put
| out by Taschen called Japan 1900 that you might want to check
| out! I have a copy and I love it. It just can't actually go on my
| coffee table since I have three kids under ten running around
| throwing juice and crumbs and handprints everywhere.
|
| https://www.taschen.com/en/books/photography/41412/japan-190...
| gramie wrote:
| It's interesting that in the photo of three girls, they are
| smiling broadly. I had thought that traditional Japanese culture
| (and still, often, today) women tended to cover their mouths, and
| displaying teeth was considered somewhat vulgar or even obscene.
| At one point, women even blackened their teeth!
|
| Maybe that wasn't universal, or the photographer convinced the
| women to show their smiles.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > I'm once again struck by the fact that none of the people in
| these images are still with us.
|
| Sometimes I think about that when watching an older movie.
| johnea wrote:
| Wow! Spectacular images!
|
| Seeing the captured images, instead of drawings or verbal
| description, is such a window back in time.
| danans wrote:
| The mailman had a pretty wild costume
| mvk666 wrote:
| wow, my great grandfather fought in WWI, got captured and went
| through Russia, Japan, Hawaii, Panama and back to Europe. He
| collected postcards like these, we still have them
| maxtaqo wrote:
| Ghibli's films, especially Neighbour Totoro, depict Japan in the
| 1960s, and it is often muttered by old people after watching
| Hayao Miyazaki's films that this was the best point of landscape
| and modern affluence.
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