52 - JAPAN. A collection of original installments from the masterful work *Japan: Described and Illustrated by the Japanese*, edited by Captain Francis Brinkley and published in Boston by the J.B. Millet Company between 1897 and 1898. Rather than being bound directly into a hardcover volume, this rare version consists of 15 individual installments (or sections) in their original soft covers with red cloth spines. This major historical and ethnographic work on Meiji-era Japan is particularly renowned for its rich iconography. It includes numerous albumen prints hand-colored at the time by Tamamura Kozaburo’s studio, as well as superb floral collotypes printed by the famous photographer Ogawa Kazumasa. 15 large folio volumes, complete. (H. 41 x W. 32 cm). 1898. Numerous original photographs. (Albumin prints, each approximately 25 x 19 cm). Numerous illustrations in the text and color lithographs—the oldest and most comprehensive series of books on Japan featuring original photographs. Most of the photographs are by the pioneer of Japanese photography, Ogawa Kazumasa (also known as Ogawa Kazuma or Ogawa Isshin, 1860–1929), including the famous photograph of Mount Fuji (“Mount Fuji as Seen from Kashiwabara”), Japanese sumo wrestlers, women at a tea ceremony, the “Tattooed Postman,” and others. - Ogawa studied English with Hideo Yoshiwara at the age of 15 and moved to Tokyo in 1880 to improve his English skills. In Yokohama, he was trained by Renjo Shimooka, one of the first professional photographers. In 1882, he traveled to Boston, where he took courses in portrait photography and learned phototype printing at the Albert Type Company. After returning to Japan in 1884, he opened a photography studio in Iidabashi (Kojimachi)—the first of its kind in Tokyo. Four years later, he founded a dry plate factory, and in 1889, Japan’s first phototype printing plant (Ogawa Shashin jo). Ogawa also served as editor-in-chief of the first two Japanese photography magazines, which were produced at his company using the phototype printing process. He was also a founding member of the Japan Photographic Society. - “At the end of the 19th century, the first photographic publications on Japan by a Japanese photographer were published in Boston and London, even though Japan showed little interest in them. Most of the early photographs in these ‘foreign’ publications came from the studio of Ogawa Kazumasa, who was also a printer and publisher. He had learned English and the craft of photomechanical printing in Boston in 1884. He opened his first studio in Tokyo the following year. Former collection: Felix Régamey (Secretary General of the Franco-Japanese Society of Paris).