浮世の花 - Sanders of Oxford

Dimensions: 9 1/4 x 7 1/4 inches
Code: AD32
Price [Framed]: £320
A rare naturalistic outdoor study of a senior maiko, or possibly a debuting geisha, wearing
lacquered okubo [high clogs]. Their distinctive sound, resonating throughout the floating
world, entered the Japanese language as the onomatopoeia koppori or pokkuri.
51. Anonymous Photographer, possibly Kusakabe Kimbei (1841-1934)
On Snowing [Geisha in a Two-passenger Jinrikisha]
Date [Western]: ca. 1880-5
Date [Japanese]: Meiji period
Method: Hand-tinted albumen print
Dimensions: 7 3/4 x 10 1/4 inches [Image]
Code: SOX
Price [Framed]: £170
The jinrikisha [lit. man-powered vehicle] or rickshaw first appeared in Tôkyô in 1870. An
invention variously ascribed to Jonathan Goble, an American Baptist missionary, and to
Izumi Yosuke, Suzuki Tokujiro, and Takayama Kosuke, the group of enterprising Japanese
townsmen who obtained the first manufacturing license, the jinrikisha quickly replaced the
kago [palanquin] as the transportation of choice for the urban masses of the Meiji period.
According to a contemporary report in the Shinbun Zasshi newspaper, its rise in popularity
was such that by 1872, only two years after the first passengers were gingerly stepping into
the early prototypes, over 40, 000 were plying their trade in the capital’s streets.
From its inception, it was constructed in one- and two-passenger versions, the latter swiftly
becoming identified with trysts and romantic intimacy, inspiring popular songs such as
Ainori Horokake (‘Beneath a Hood for Two’) and Hoppeta Ottsuke (‘Cheek Pressed to
Cheek’). As such, it became a mainstay of early photographer’s studios: here, two young
geisha pose amidst a carefully constructed winter scene.
52. Felice Beato (ca. 1825-ca.1908)
Japonais dans son intérier [Geisha holding an ebony kiseru [pipe], surrounded by the
symbols of her art ~ shamisen, koto and tea kettle]
Date [Western]: ca.1880-1883
Date [Japanese]: ca. Meiji 13-16
Method: Hand-tinted albumen silver photograph
Studio Location: Yokohama
Dimensions: 10 x 7 3/4 inches [Image]
Code: AD1
Price [Mounted]: £480
Felice Beato was arguably the most important foreign figure working in the field of Japanese
photography in the late nineteenth century. One of the originators of photojournalism, he
travelled to India in 1857, taking what are retrospectively considered to be the definitive
images of the Indian Mutiny, and then to East Asia in 1860, becoming the first Western
photographer to work in China, as he followed and recorded the British army during the
Second Opium War. Previously he had worked as an assistant to James Robertson, whose
body of work in the Crimea, to which Beato contributed, is generally defined as the first
distinct example of objective war photojournalism.
Beato was probably born in Corfu, then a Venetian territory, but at some point he and his
brother Antonio (or Antoine) Beato (ca.1830-ca.1903), both became British citizens. This
was a period when Britain welcomed political exiles and many Italian nationalists, such as
the Rossetti family, were living and working in London. Antonio Beato was also a keen
photographer and the two brothers worked together on a number of occasions, signing their
collaborative works Felice Antonio Beato; later problematizing the identification of