# “Shashin” and Photography in Japan

> Perhaps these unsettled conditions, in which major changes continued to occur, also awakened people’s desire for the “real.”.

- Language: en
- Published: 2019-11-12
- Author: GuoJing
- Category: Post
- Canonical: https://afterimage.photography/post/en/japan-shashin-and-photography

In the previous podcast episode, we discussed some thoughts on how the absence of a history of film photography has affected photography. Recently, I have been looking at photographic works from countries that did not miss this period, in order to understand what exactly is absent. Japan, being close to us, offers a particularly useful point of reference.

I use the word “thoughts” rather than “study” or “lessons” perhaps because, at an instinctive level, I still have a private attachment to a sense of history and the bearing of a major country. Of course, we should remain humble and learn. But in terms of attitude, there is no need to uncritically revere the photographic methods and techniques of any particular country.

The Podcast column is intended to provide some written fragments of what was discussed in the podcast. It can be read as a preview or a recap, and some of the photographs mentioned in the podcast can also be viewed here. This column is only one person’s view, and my own knowledge is limited, so readers should form their own thoughts.

This episode concerns the relationship between Japan’s “shashin” and photography in a country that did not miss the history of the medium. My references include *Thoughts on Photography*, *Art Today*, and several online sources. The fuller discussion is available in the podcast. Here, I have selected a few passages that I found useful and added some notes of my own.

## 01 — “Shashin” and Painting Were Not Considered Different

The concept of “shashin,” emphasized as a principle of Western painting, continued from the final years of the Tokugawa shogunate into the Meiji period. It was also frequently raised when Western painting was compared with Japanese or Chinese painting, as evidence of the former’s superiority. (1828–1894)

This shows that Japan began thinking about the terminology for what we call “photography” at an early stage—much earlier than China. These early reflections were quite simple. By then, Chinese and Japanese painting had each reached a certain stage of development. When photography arrived in Japan, people were astonished by such a “truthful” form of depiction, including the use of perspective. What surprises me is that this kind of discussion was already taking place in 1828. Even then, there seems to have been a notion, or at least the beginnings of one, that Western theory was superior to Eastern theory. As a result, many people abandoned “traditional” methods and used photography to create shashin. The term “shashin” thus took shape in Japan through the idea of depicting things as they truly were.

From this perspective, early Japanese photography was effectively no different from painting. Nor did anyone consider that lack of distinction a problem.

![A photograph on the left and a painting by Takahashi Yuichi on the right](https://afterimage-images.sgp1.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/duidui/2026/08/896becfd-0e9c-4ada-a2f7-03b0190b1392.jpg)

The image on the left is a photograph by an unknown photographer; the work on the right is a painting by Takahashi Yuichi.

At the time, photographs often served as aids for painters. From the end of the shogunate to the beginning of the Meiji period, photography, oil painting, copperplate printing, and other expressive media entered Japan at roughly the same time, making a strong impression on young people. Some painters used photographs as models and then recreated the images in another medium. They even used photographs to correct shadows that were difficult to observe in ordinary circumstances. In other words, the ability to make something look “exactly like the real thing” was both astonishing and worth viewing at the time. (Meanwhile, Impressionism had already begun in the West.)

Yokoyama Matsusaburō, for example, was both a photographer and a painter. He spent six months on a long-term photographic project. Some might describe it as street photography, but I now find the concept of street photography too narrow; the work seems closer to documentary photography. Around Meiji 15 (1882), he completed the development of a technique known as “photographic oil painting,” which was patented by his student Azukizawa Ryōichi. The technique suggests that, for Yokoyama, there was little difference between photography and Western painting. In practical terms, “photographic oil painting” involved peeling away a thin layer of photosensitive emulsion from the surface of photographic paper and applying color from the reverse side with oil-painting tools.

The influence of photography can also be seen in his self-portrait.

![Self-portrait by Yokoyama Matsusaburō](https://afterimage-images.sgp1.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/duidui/2026/08/f808bdd3-f06a-47f9-8196-6b6a213457b6.png)

## 02 — Felice Beato and the Taste for the Exotic

Photography in Japan was still treated as something novel at the time. One body of work worth discussing is *Yokohama Shashin*. My purpose here is not to evaluate the photographs themselves. What concerns us is broader, involving society, history, human nature, and other questions.

Put simply, *Yokohama Shashin* was a general name for the photographs first produced and sold by Felice Beato—although I am still unsure whether “photographer” is the right term for him in this context. These photographs were originally made as souvenirs for foreign buyers. In a rough sense, I think of them as the tourist postcards of their day, though their subjects were perhaps chosen with a stronger taste for the exotic and unusual.

For example, Beato hired Japanese people to pose in various ways inside a studio, creating the exotic atmosphere that foreign customers wanted and then selling the resulting pictures. He photographed sumo wrestlers in ready stances and geisha with their upper bodies exposed. From this we can see that, at the beginning of photography, people already approached the medium with different aims. The purpose might have been commerce, or it might have been curiosity about the exotic. Seen today, these subjects can appear vulgar. In an age when ideas of freedom circulate widely, some of the photographs even give me the sense of a “human zoo.” Even so, perhaps this was one of the most effective uses of photography at the time—and perhaps an early predecessor of commercial photography. But another point is worth considering: are we still doing the same thing today?

![Yokohama Shashin, image 1](https://afterimage-images.sgp1.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/duidui/2026/08/fe09603c-3163-478c-a3da-3c78ccaf4967.jpg) ![Yokohama Shashin, image 2](https://afterimage-images.sgp1.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/duidui/2026/08/94cb7e37-ec1c-4a5e-a5d9-ae712b126caf.jpg)

![Yokohama Shashin, image 3](https://afterimage-images.sgp1.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/duidui/2026/08/6b493ad0-92d4-4b92-9214-f998ad1693d1.jpg)

![Yokohama Shashin, image 4](https://afterimage-images.sgp1.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/duidui/2026/08/5f949f58-6784-481d-b930-d4d7f6e1966e.jpg) 
![Yokohama Shashin, image 5](https://afterimage-images.sgp1.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/duidui/2026/08/577999cd-a086-4468-a3a3-0856ae4af32a.jpg)

![Yokohama Shashin, image 6](https://afterimage-images.sgp1.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/duidui/2026/08/61c96c7e-b900-4eeb-939b-902c8132d7ca.jpg)

## 03 — What Is Missing

To be honest, when I look at these photographs and read these materials, I feel envious.

More than 160 years ago, when photography entered Japan, the Edo shogunate, which had endured for nearly three centuries, was collapsing, and the frameworks of a new society and culture were being reshaped. Perhaps these unsettled conditions, in which major changes continued to occur, also awakened people’s desire for the “real.” This was also a time when the magical and mythic qualities originally associated with photography were still shared by photographers and painters, and were taking shape in many different forms. After the middle and later years of the Meiji period, as Japan gradually transformed into a modern state, the expressive appeal created by the integration of photography and painting rapidly disintegrated.

What I envy is that this period, or this process, at least existed in Japan. It included things that may seem particularly “ridiculous” to us today: photographs that resemble a human zoo, a taste for the exotic, and an understanding of photography as “shashin” that treated it as no different from painting.

The significance of its having existed is that it provided something tangible to reflect upon. It also prompted the beginnings of thought about a photographic “language” of Japan’s own. This is why we can now see—in the West as well—that reflection on realism led to the emergence of more modern approaches to photography. The origins of these approaches can be traced.

So I sometimes think, “How fortunate,” when I consider Japanese photography. Although it may still have lagged behind the West—or perhaps it had already moved in a different direction—it nevertheless, in my view, surpassed China across the board, while also gaining the opportunity to think about and develop its own photographic “language” and “system.” It was precisely because of the earlier imitation of painting, which we now consider “incorrect,” and the posed photographs that seem almost open to ridicule, that the later genre of *shishashin*, or personal photography, could perhaps emerge.

From this perspective, what is missing may take much longer to make up for. Still, one reason for optimism is that perhaps we, too, are part of history.