Seibei Kashima

Mount Fuji from Kashiwabara, 1890.

View of Miyajima, 1890.

Before I started thinking about this piece, I started getting the feeling that I was out of good ideas as to what I could write about. I've written about music, and art, and film. I started asking myself: what else is there? And for a while, I found myself unable to answer that question! Until it hit me: photography. In the present (as in the past) photography has occupied a strange place in peoples minds. It's certainly got artistic aspects, but it also has very technical aspects. Photography is used to capture moments in a way our memories cannot, but there are also those who compose photographs for artistic reasons. At any rate, I decided to look into the history of photography in Japan, and it is certainly an interesting story. However, to keep this concise, I decided to write about Seibei Kashima—an amateur photographer who rose to prominence during the Meiji era.

Kashima was born in 1866—only a few years before emperor Meiji ascended to the throne—in Osaka, but was adopted at an early age by a family of sake brewers in Tokyo. It wouldn't be long before he took a great interest in photography. It was only in 1848 that the first

Torii at Itsukashima, 1890.

camera arrived in Japan, brought to Nagasaki by Dutch traders. However, during the Meiji era, Japan was opened to trade with the west, which brought new opportunities. When Kashima reached the age of about 19, he requested private lessons from renowned photographer Reiji Esaki. For the next year and a half he served as Esaki's assistant, during which he developed a great sense of enthusiasm for the craft. Several years later, he would work with yet Ogawa Kazumasa, who helped introduce the dry plate process to Japan, and W.K. Burton, an English engineer, who became founders of the Japan Photographic Society (日本写真会, Nihon Shashinkai)—Kashima would also become a member.

Kashima is well remembered because he was one of the first amateur photographers to rise to prominence—after all, this was still a time in which photography required equipment beyond the means of most individuals. Kashima was a member of a wealthy family, and used his wealth to pursue this particular avocation. However, he was instrumental in popularizing photographic studios in Japan, as well as the manufacturing of photographic materials in Japan, which would otherwise need to be imported at high expense.

Wetsu Kashima, 1890s.

 One particular episode in his life, for which he has become remembered, was an affair with a geisha named Ponta (ぽん太). He was married at the time, resulting in something of a scandal. The two later married, after Kashima divorced his current wife, and she took the name Wetsu Kashima (鹿嶋ゑつ). She would also go on to support the family, as Seibei was injured later in life during a photography accident—I'm afraid details are scarce as to what may have actually gone wrong.


Similar to another figure I've written about, his eccentric lifestyle earned him enough notoriety to be the subject of a short story by Mori Ougai called "Hyaku Monogatari" (百物語, A Roung of Ghost Stories). A Kindle version is available for free, if you are able to read Japanese. Unfortunately, I've been unable to track down many more photographs than are presented here, though they can be found here.

読んで、ありがとう。