Arnold Genthe in Japan

Images of tradition and change at the end of the Meiji Period

Alex Q. Arbuckle

1908

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These photographs, taken by photographer Arnold Genthe during a six-month visit to Japan in 1908, offer a record of life in the last years of the Meiji period, which lasted from 1868 to 1912.Born and educated in Germany, Genthe moved to San Francisco in 1895 to work as a tutor. In his free time, he photographed street scenes in the city’s Chinatown, and eventually opened his own studio. Both his studio and Chinatown were destroyed in the massive earthquake and fire of 1906 — but his Chinatown photos, stored in a bank vault, became one of the only surviving visual records of the neighborhood.After reestablishing his studio, Genthe took six months off and traveled across the Pacific to see Japan.There, he made posed portraits and candid snapshots across a country that, while still filled with ritual and tradition, was becoming rapidly interconnected by railroads, telegraph lines and industrial development.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

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Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

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