OGAWA, Kazumasa (photographer). MILNE, John. and William Kinninmond BURTON. The Great Earthquake in Japan, 1891 … Second Edition. Yokahama, Japan: Lane, Crawford & Co. [1891].
Oblong 4to. Original green cloth, lettered in gilt to upper cover, bookbinder's ticket of N. Yubi, Minami Nabecho, Tokyo, pasted to front fixed endpaper; pp. [viii], 70; 38 photogravures on 30 leaves reproduced by Ogawa after photographs by the authors, captioned tissue guard to each, single map at rear (engraved by Ogawa); re-backed, light bubbling and spotting to cloth, but internally very clean, final plate and map with trace of a little insect damage to gutter; provenance: slightly later I.C.S.T. Geology Department Library (Imperial College of Science and Technology, London; founded in 1907) stamp to front paste-down and title-page, later Judd Library stamp added.
An extraordinary series of photographs detailing the destruction wrought in the Japanese prefectures of Aichi and Gifu on the 28th October 1891. The quality of Ogawa's reproductions allows one to appreciate the harrowing nature of the disaster; each plate is in addition accompanied by an explanatory leaf of text providing graphic accounts of the nature of damage to persons and property. Ogawa Kazumasa (1860-1929) was a 'pivotal figure in early Japanese photography. He adapted cutting-edge Western technology in photo-printing processes to produce numerous half-tone and collotype publications which transformed the market' (Terry Bennett, Japanese Photography in Japan 1850 - 1912, p. 288). The British authors and photographers both were professors at the Imperial University of Japan. Milne was a 'famous English seismologist … [and] a keen amateur photographer' (ibid. p. 287). 'Scottish by birth, Burton came to Japan in 1887 as an engineeer. By then he was already well known as a prolific writer and expert on photography' (ibid p. 281). He introduced art photography to Japan through the 1893 International Photographic Exhibition.
Wenckstern, Bibliography of the Japanese Empire, I.286.
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