4056 - Japan

Japan John Milne and W.K. Burton. The Great Earthquake in Japan 1891. Photographs principally by William Kinninmond Burton (1856-1899), with contributions by Kin Miyashita (active late 19th century), Saburō Aoyama (active late 19th century), Kusakabe Kimbei (1841-1934) and Bokuyō Nakamura (active late 19th century). 5 l., 10 p., 30 photomechanical plates by Ogawa Kazumasa (1860-1929), each with accompanying text page, and 1 map. Images each ca. 22,5 x 28,5 cm. Bound in original emerald-green cloth album with gilt-stamped title on front cover. Yokohama: Lane, Crawford & Co., ca. 1893. This scarce second edition is an important early photographic record of the Mino–Owari, or Nōbi, earthquake of 28 October 1891. The most powerful inland earthquake recorded in modern Japan, it devastated the provinces of Mino and Owari, killing more than 7,000 people and destroying some 140,000 buildings. The plates document collapsed bridges, buckled railway lines, ruined factories and hospitals, temporary shelters and displaced inhabitants, tracing the disaster’s impact on both traditional settlements and the modernizing infrastructure of Meiji Japan. Ogawa’s finely printed photomechanical plates convey the scale and human consequences of the destruction with exceptional immediacy. Accompanying texts give detailed accounts of the damage to life and property, while the final plate extends the volume’s comparative scope through six views of earthquake damage in Manila and Italy. – Album cover slightly rubbed and soiled; page edges slightly time-stained; several plates with a vertical fold mark along the left plate mark near the inner binding, a few with light spots, otherwise in good condition.