773
photographs were judged by secret ballot, and quickly
established an extensive regional network and its own
journal in June 1894. Nevertheless, the Society, which
changed its name in May 1897 to the Dai Nihon Shashin
Kyôkai (Greater Japan Photography Association), never
quite lost its elitist tone, the social composition of its
membership, which was dominated by members of the
upper class as much as professional photographers,
serves as a reminder that by the end of the nineteenth
century photography was still not yet within the reach
of ordinary Japanese. Both associations appear to have
ceased their activities at the end of the 1890s, when their
fi nancial backer Kajima went bankrupt, although at the
same time other amateur photographic associations were
being established on a local level across Japan and its
growing empire, and by 1902, photographers in Tokyo,
Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe and even Taiwan had formed their
own organizations.
It was the rise of the amateur photographer in the
1890s that gave permanence to the photographic journals
that had begun springing up sporadically in Japan two
decades before. Japan’s fi rst photographic journal, the
elegantly named Datsuei Yawa (‘Night Conversations
Fleeing from the Shadows’) was published in 1874 by
the Tokyo-based photographer Kitaniwa Tsukuba but
lasted for only three issues. It fell into limbo for six years
until another Tokyo publisher took up the baton in April
1880 and reissued it under the new name of Shashin
Zasshi (‘Photographic Magazine’). Despite extending
its circulation beyond the Tokyo area, the new journal
lasted for only seven issues and ceased publication in
- In the following year, another Tokyo photogra-
pher, Futami Asakuma, established the Shashin Shimpô
(‘Photographic News’), which lasted for 18 issues and
almost two years until it folded in July 1884. In Febru-
ary 1889, the title was resurrected by Ogawa Kazumasa
and proved more lasting under his custodianship. By the
fall of September 1896, no fewer than four photographic
journals were in existence, including the Shashin Shimpô
and the Shashin Geppô (‘Monthly Photographic Jour-
nal’), which had been established in February 1894 by
Konishi Rokuhei, a prominent photographic supplier
(the present-day Konica). Both journals would continue
publication until December 1940.
By 1900, Japanese photography had not only closed
the technological gap with the West but had also es-
tablished itself as part of Japan’s modernisation. There
is perhaps no better contemporary statement of where
Japanese photography stood on the eve of the twentieth
century than William K. Burton’s assessment delivered
to the readers of The Practical Photographer in Sep-
tember 1896:
‘It is not too much to say that, till about eight years
ago, the technical diffi culties that the Japanese photog-
rapher had to contend against were so great, that his
attention was taken up with these alone, and that he
had no superfl uous mind or energy left to grapple with
the artistic side of the subject... It will probably not be
generally granted that the photography of the Japanese
of the present day is up to the level of the best Occidental
photography, so far as artistic merit is concerned, but if
the present rate of improvement be maintained, what is
to be looked for twenty years hence, or it may be fi fty,
or even a hundred? I for one would not be surprised
to see Japan excel all other countries in the matter of
photography as an art.’
Sebastian Dobson
See also: Brown Jr, Eliphalet; Ueno Hikoma; Kern,
Edward Meyer; Rossier, Pierre, Negretti and Zambra;
Beato, Antonio; von Stillfried und Ratenitz, Baron
Raimund; Wet Collodion Negative; and Swan, Sir
Joseph Wilson.Further Reading
Bennett, Terry, Early Japanese Images, Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle
Co. Ltd, 1996.
Kinoshita Naoyuki, Nihon no Shashinka 1—Ueno Hikoma to Ba-
kumatsu no shashinkatachi, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1997.
Kinoshita Naoyuki, Nihon no Shashinka 2—Tamoto Kenzô to
Meiji no shashinkatachi, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1999.
‘Photography and Photographers in Japan’ (Japanese Double
Number): The Practical Photographer, vol. VII, no. 81,
September 1896.
Sharf, Frederic A., Dobson, Sebastian & Morse, Anne Nishimura,
Art and Artifi ce, Japanese Photographs of the Meiji Era,
Boston: Museum of Fine Art, 2004.
Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, The Advent of Pho-
tography in Japan, Tokyo & Hakodate: Tokyo Metropolitan
Museum of Photography, Tokyo, in association with Hakodate
Museum of Art, 1997.
Tucker, Anne Wilkes, Friis-Hansen, Dana, Kaneko Ryuichi, and
Takeba, Joe,: The History of Japanese Photography, New
Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press in association
with The Houston Museum of Fine Art, 2003.JENNINGS, WILLIAM NICHOLSON
(1860–1946)
American photographer
William Nicholson Jennings, a Philadelphia commer-
cial photographer, was born on 16 November 1860 in
Yorkshire, England to wool merchants William Jennings
and Sara Ann Palmer Nicholson. An aerial and progress
photographer, an active member of the Franklin Insti-
tute, and one of the founders of the American Museum
of Photography, Jennings took up photography as a
hobby, using his camera as a scientifi c tool to capture
the world’s fi rst picture of lightning on 2 September- From 1885–1896 he worked as a Pennsylvania
Railroad photographer, documenting construction sites
and damaged infrastructure, including the wreckage