Tokyo Pleasures: Photographs
Description
A print from the series "Tokyo Pleasures" depicting the fashionable activity of having one's photograph taken — a practice that was both a novelty of Meiji modernization and a significant social event, since portrait photography was expensive, formal, and required special preparation. The introduction of photography to Japan in the 1850s and its rapid spread through the Meiji era made the photographic studio a new kind of social space, and prints depicting the photographic experience documented this transformation of how Japanese people created and preserved their own images.
More Prints by Toyohara Chikanobu
More Urban Scenes Prints
A Hundred Shades of Ink of Edo: Kiyonaga's Pipe (Edo zumi hyaku shoku: Kiyonaga no kiseru)
Woodblock print
View of Kabuki Theater from Matsuya (Ginza Matsuya yori Kabukiza), no. 3 from the series "Pictures of Ginza, First Series (Gashu Ginza dai isshu)"
1928
Color lithograph
Distant View of Mitsukoshi Movie Theater in Shinjuku from the Sixth Floor of Hoteiya (Hoteiya rokkai kara Shinjuku Mitsukoshi Musashi no kan enbo zu), no. 1 from the series "Scenery of Shinjuku (Gashu Shinjuku fukei)"
1930
Color lithograph
Spring Dusk at the Tōshō Shrine in Ueno
1948
Woodblock print, ink and color on paper
Featured in Collections
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Frequently Asked Questions
Tokyo Pleasures: Photographs was created by Toyohara Chikanobu (豊原周延).
Tokyo Pleasures: Photographs depicts urban scenes, bijin-ga, and daily life, set at Tokyo.