1022
industry. In 1888 Ogawa, Kajima Seibei, and William
K. Burton, an amateur photographer and a professor
of engineering at Tokyo Imperial University, formed
the Tsukiji Kampan Seizô Kaisha (Tsukiji Dry-Plate
Manufacturing Company), one of Japan’s earliest com-
mercial dry-plate manufacturers. Although it folded
several years later, Ogawa continued to support other
domestic dry-plate companies. He then established
Japan’s fi rst photoengraving company, Ogawa Shashin
Seihanjo (Ogawa Plate-Making Shop) in 1889. Through
the Ogawa Shashin Seihanjo, he became a prominent
publisher and produced numerous books featuring high
quality collotype images. Ogawa himself took many of
the photographs. Among the earliest items published
by the Ogawa Shashin Seihanjo was Japan’s fi rst art
magazine, Kokka (National Essence), still in produc-
tion today. Kokka focused on traditional Japanese art
and early issues reproduced Ogawa’s classic images of
Japanese Buddhist sculpture taken as part of the 1888
survey of cultural assets.
Signifi cantly, Ogawa’s books were largely directed
towards a Western audience, and consequently he played
an enormously important role in exposing Japan to the
West as it emerged from two and a half centuries of
isolationism. Most of his publications included English
language captions and information, sometimes com-
bined with Japanese text; many were so popular that
they were printed in multiple editions. Typical topics
were scenic or general themes that appealed to West-
erners’ curiosity about Japan. Some sample titles are:
Illustrations of Japanese Life, with collotypes of people
engaged in various daily activities, issued in multiple
editions between 1892–1918; The Charming Views in
the ‘Land of the Rising Sun (1904), with 174 black and
white photographs covering all areas of Japan includ-
ing Formosa (Taiwan) and Korea; and Photographs of
Japanese Customs and Manners, with several editions
published around 1900. Flowers were another common
subject and Ogawa released titles such as Lilies of Japan
and Chrysanthemums of Japan. The full-page color col-
lotypes of fl owers he contributed to the multi-volume
work Japan, Described and Illustrated by the Japanese,
published by J. B. Millet Company in the late 1890s,
are among his best-known work. And of course there
was the perennially favorite theme of geisha. In 1891,
Ogawa was commissioned to photograph 100 local
geisha to celebrate the opening of the Ryôunkaku or
“Asakusa Twelve Stories,” an amusement center in the
tallest building in Tokyo. These images as well as other
portraits of geisha were incorporated into various edi-
tions released over the next decade, including Types of
Japan, Celebrated Geysha of Tokyo (1892); Celebrated
Geishas of Tokio (1895); and Geisha of Tokyo (multiple
versions, 1898–1902).
Ogawa’s other activities included being a founding
member of Japan’s fi rst amateur photography associa-
tion, Nihon Shashinkai (the Japan Photographic Society)
in 1889. The same year he established a second version
of Shashin shimpô (the fi rst version, mentioned above,
had ceased publication in 1884) and served as editor
until 1896. He became the fi rst Japanese photographer
to be nominated as a fellow of the Royal Photographic
Society of England in 1895, and was the fi rst photog-
rapher appointed as a member of the Japanese Imperial
Art Academy in 1910.
Ogawa was well regarded during his lifetime, widely
recognized for his innovation in establishing new photo-
graphic technologies in Japan. Based on his infl uence on
the Japanese photography industry, the many activities
in which he was involved, and his reputation as a superb
photographer, Burton described him as “the greatest au-
thority on photographic matters in his country” (Burton,
1894, 185). In 2004 he continues to be regarded as a
pivotal fi gure and a pioneering entrepreneur in Japanese
photographic history. His work is in the collections of
Nagasaki University and the Tokyo Metropolitan Mu-
seum of Photography.
Karen Fraser
See also: Uchida Kuichi; Wet Collodion Negative;
Carte-de-Visite; Collotype; Carbutt, John; Dry Plate
Negatives: Gelatine; Dry Plate Negatives: Non-
Gelatine, Including Dry Collodion ; Burton, William
Kinninmond; Photographic Exchange Club and
Photographic Society Club, London.Further Reading
Bennett, Terry, Early Japanese Images. Rutland VT: Charles E.
Tuttle, 1996.
Bethel, Denise, “The J.B. Millet Company’s Japan: Described
and Illustrated by the Japanese—an initial investigation,” in
Image, Spring-Summer 1991, 2–21.
Burton, William K., “A Japanese Photographer,” in Anthony’s
Photographic Bulletin, March 22 1890, 181–185.
Ozawa Kiyoshi, Shashinkai no senkaku—Ogawa Kazuma no
shôgai (A Pioneer of Photography—The Life of Ogawa Ka-
zuma). Tokyo: Nihon Kokusho Kankôkai, 1994.
Tucker, Anne Wilkes et al., The History of Japanese Photography.
New Haven: Yale University Press in association with the
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2003.
Worswick, Clark, ed., Japan: Photographs 1854–1905. New
York: Pennwick/Alfred A. Knopf, 1979.OLIE, JACOB (1834–1905)
An animated nineteenth-century amateur
photographer in Amsterdam
To Jacob Olie photography was a pursuit which he prac-
tised intensively in his youth and again in later life after
an interlude of 25 years. Olie was originally trained as a
carpenter and took lessons in drawing and in theoretical