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was a pioneering
was a pioneering Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
photographer and artist. He was born in modern-day Tochigi Prefecture
is a landlocked Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Tochigi Prefecture has a population of 1,897,649 (1 June 2023) and has a geographic area of 6,408 Square kilometre, km2 (2,474 Square mile, sq mi ...
.
Early life
Possibly inspired by his father, who was an avid painter, in 1847 he entered an art school inEdo
Edo (), also romanized as Jedo, Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of Tokyo.
Edo, formerly a (castle town) centered on Edo Castle located in Musashi Province, became the '' de facto'' capital of Japan from 1603 as the seat of the Tokugawa shogu ...
(now Tokyo
Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...
) where he met Ryū (surname unknown; 1823–1900), a fellow student. The two married in 1855 and soon began moving about the Kantō region
The is a geography, geographical region of Honshu, the largest island of Japan. In a common definition, the region includes the Greater Tokyo Area and encompasses seven prefectures of Japan, prefectures: Chiba Prefecture, Chiba, Gunma Prefe ...
, possibly exhibiting their works along the way.
Photography career
At this time Shima seems to have had some pictures published as book illustrations. At some point the couple learned photography, and in the spring of 1864 Ryu photographed Kakoku, thereby creating the earliest known photograph by a Japanese woman. A wet-plate print of this portrait remains in the Shima family archives. The Shimas operated aphotographic studio
A photographic studio is often a business owned and represented by one or more photographers, possibly accompanied by assistants and pupils, who create and sell their own and sometimes others’ photographs.
History
Since the early years of th ...
in Edo in about 1865 to 1867, until Kakoku accepted a teaching position at Kaiseijo.
Later, Shima worked at ''Daigaku Tōkō'' (, the predecessor of the School of Medicine, University of Tokyo
The University of Tokyo (, abbreviated as in Japanese and UTokyo in English) is a public research university in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Founded in 1877 as the nation's first modern university by the merger of several pre-westernisation era ins ...
), and while there invented the first Japanese movable type
Movable type (US English; moveable type in British English) is the system and technology of printing and typography that uses movable Sort (typesetting), components to reproduce the elements of a document (usually individual alphanumeric charac ...
, for the printing of medical textbooks.
Shima Kakoku died in 1870, and his wife returned to Kiryū where she opened her own photographic studio.
Notes
References
* Bennett, Terry. ''Photography in Japan: 1853–1912'' Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle, 2006. (hard) *''Nihon no shashinka'' () / ''Biographic Dictionary of Japanese Photography.'' Tokyo: Nichigai Associates, 2005. . Pp. 208–209. Despite the English-language alternative title, all in Japanese. 1827 births 1870 deaths Pioneers of photography 19th-century Japanese photographers Japanese portrait photographers People of the Meiji era Artists from Tochigi Prefecture {{Japan-photographer-stub