浮世の花 - Sanders of Oxford

A figure of import in the development of Japanese photography, Stillfried widened the arena
of imagery considered suitable for photographic treatment; his subjects ranging from
marketable portraits of geisha and courtesans to the sensitive documentation of unusual
medical ailments [such as, for example, his study of Elephantiasis, ca. 1870s]. He also
provided training for many Japanese artists, most notably Kusakabe Kimbei, to whom he
sold the majority of his stock upon his departure from Japan in 1886.
In the Japanese imagination, the three-stringed shamisen was one of the iconic
accoutrements of the Flower and Willow trade. Introduced from China via Korea in the
1560s, within a century it had become the principal instrument of the newly emerged figure
of the geisha. As Dalby [1983; 2000: p. 259] points out, ‘Whenever one heard a shamisen,
one heard the music of the city-dwelling merchant class…the upper classes did not play (and
were not supposed to listen to) the plaintive and sentimental lyrics that went with shamisen
tunes.’ As the quintessential sound of the Floating World, the instrument was frequently
subject to governmental bans, but nevertheless was played and enjoyed everywhere, as such
becoming the most necessitous attribute of a working geisha. As an old geisha saying had it:
Sanbon ga areba, taberareru [‘If you’ve got three strings, you can eat’].
55. Adolfo Farsari (1841-1898)
Three Maiko posing on an Engawa [veranda].
Date [Western]: ca. 1885
Date [Japanese]: ca. Meiji 18
Method: Hand-tinted albumen print
Dimensions: 10 x 8 inches [Image]
References: Tony Bennett, Early Japanese Images, (Tôkyô: Charles E.Tuttle, 1995)
Code: JO/AD24
Price [Mounted]: £225
Adolfo Farsari was born in the town of Vicenza, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
A fervent abolitionist, he travelled to America in 1863, enlisting in the Union army as a
cavalry soldier during the Civil War. He moved to Yokohama in 1877 to set up trading as a
tobacco merchant, but soon became fascinated by the aesthetic and financial possibilities of
photography. In 1885, he bought the Japan Photographic Association studio from Baron von
Stillfried, a transaction that included not only valuable negatives by the Baron and Beato, but
also fifteen skilled colourists. However, this initial good fortune was marred by a devastating
fire which destroyed his entire stock. Nevertheless, it was quickly reproduced by the stoic
Farsari in a matter of months and, bolstered by the popularity of the ‘Yokohama Shashin’
culture, his business continued to flourish. He subsequently moved his studio to the original
location of the Yokohama Photographic Company. The resultant A. Farsari & Company
would eventually become one of Japan’s largest photography studios, with, at one point,
over forty Japanese artists associated with the business. When Fasari eventually returned to
Italy in 1890, his studios continued to trade until 1917, becoming the last Western-owned
photographic house in Japan.
To his contemporaries, Fasari was known principally for his extraordinary use of naturalistic
colour, Rudyard Kipling noting this aspect of Farsari's work in 1889 when he advised his
readers:
‘Though expensive and perhaps you end up penniless, unless you are already penniless, in
Japan you have to buy photographs and the best are from the Farsari & Co. studio, known
from Saigon to America. Farsari is a nice and eccentric chap; he has the soul of an artist and
these are qualities to pay for but his stuff is worth the price. A coloured photo makes you
think of a horror and it normally is so, however Farsari knows how to colour well and can
reproduce the light tones of that beautiful country. From over the bridge on the ship I was
laughing at his red and blue hills but once I reached there I realized that what he had painted
was real.’ [Quoted in Hugh Cortezzi, Kipling’s Japan, p.102]