Description:
Japanese young woman playing a string instrument (Samisen); while seated on a large pillow on top of a wicker chest. In front of her are the accouterments of the tea ceremony.
Label Text:
Felice Beato was an Italian-British photographer who was a central figure in the introduction of studio photography in Japan. Most of his photographs of people were staged in his studio in Yokohama, where he arrived in 1863.
In this image a Japanese woman is shown playing the shamisen. Nearby is a wooden hibachi (a heating device) equipped with a kettle for boiling water to make steeped tea.
Beato’s cutomers were primarily the foreigners who had come to Yokohama as Japan gradually opened its ports and cities. They would order albums of photographs, bound with elaborate lacquer covers, and take them home as souvenirs of their time in Japan.
This photograph and others like it played a significant role in creating an image of Japan for Westerners as a traditional pre-modern society, even as the country was in fact rapidly modernizing.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=SC+1982.38.2.16 |
