TAKASHIMA, Suteta. Illustrations of Japanese Life … Reproduced and published by K. Ogawa. Yokohama, Hongkong, Shanghai and Singapore, Sole agents Kelly and Walsh, 1896.
Folio. Original silk over boards, printed colour illustrations on covers surrounded by raised frame of patterned woven silk, front cover titled in gilt and with ornamental silk tie, all edges gilt, gilt-speckled endpapers; pp. [iv], 100 collotypes (99 with colour); binding a little spotted and with light marginal wear; minimal spotting here and there to margins, one plate with light smudging to colour, a very good copy in a superior binding.
'In preparing this volume neither labour nor expense has been spared, and I send it out to the public feeling confident that no such gallery of photographs, giving the exact picture of every day life of the Japanese, has ever been presented before in one volume. Being printed by the collotype process, which has of late become very popular, the pictures herein contained are true to nature and free from any retouches by the artist. Moreover, unlike ordinary photographs, these collotype pictures are really permanent in the sense that they will not fade in any length of time', writes the publisher Ogawa in the preface to a later 4to edition with only 12 plates. This splendid and large format photographic documentation of Japanese life, domestic and public, with a focus on the women of Japan, is testimony to Ogawa's photographic and printing skills. Ogawa (1860-1929) is an outstanding pioneer in the development of photography and photomechanical printing in Japan. In the early 1880s he had studied portrait photography and the dry plate process, as well as collotype printing in the USA. On his return to Japan in 1884 he opened a photographic studio in Tokyo, and subsequently a printing business.
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