Early Japanese Stage Photographs:

The Imanari Family Photography Collection and "Kabuki Culture"

Abstract

IMANARI Bujihei (1837-1881) was a wealthy landlord and local politician, and above all, a pioneer photographer in Muikamachi (Niigata, Japan). Bujihei and his family experimented wth wet-collodion process and left many stage photographs of Ji-shibai (regional Kabuki produced by the community) during early Meiji era (c. 1866-1873). Their photographic practice is a clue to understanding the spreading process of photography in Japanese rural areas. In this paper, an effort is made to examine the relationship between their photographic practice and preceding visual culture.

  The Imanaris' stage photographs are under the influence of the practices and conventions of "Kabuki Culture": commercially-made Kabuki played in big cities, Ji­shibai, Ukiyoe (Japanese woodblock prints) and preceding stage photographs of Kabuki and their ways of creating and representing scenes. However, theu way of depicting scenes differs from the conventions of "Kabuki Culture", and, therefore, was regarded as strange by people at that time.

  To clarify the difference between the Imanaris' stage photographs and their ancestral Ukiyoe, I examine two of the Imanaris' photographs and one of Kuniyoshi's Ukiyoe both of which depict the same battle scene in Shiraishi-Banashi. The conclusion to be reached is that, while Kuniyoshi conflates sequences of actions into one picture to represent the scene, the Imanaris' photographs represent two sequential images which depict each single specific moment of the performance.