4056 - Japan

Japan John Milne and W.K. Burton. The Great Earthquake in Japan 1891. Photographs primarily by William Kinninmond Burton (1856–1899), with contributions by Kin Miyashita (active in the late 19th century), Saburō Aoyama (active in the late 19th century), Kusakabe Kimbei (1841–1934), and Bokuyō Nakamura (active in the late 19th century). 5 leaves, 10 pages, 30 photomechanical plates by Ogawa Kazumasa (1860–1929), each with an accompanying text page, and 1 map. Images each ca. 22.5 x 28.5 cm. Bound in an original emerald-green cloth album with a gilt-stamped title on the front cover. Yokohama: Lane, Crawford & Co., ca. 1893. This rare second edition is an important early photographic record of the Mino–Owari, or Nōbi, earthquake of October 28, 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 railroad tracks, ruined factories and hospitals, temporary shelters, and displaced residents, 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 provide detailed accounts of the loss of life and property damage, while the final plate broadens the volume’s comparative scope with six views of earthquake damage in Manila and Italy. – Album cover slightly rubbed and soiled; page edges slightly stained by age; several plates have a vertical fold mark along the left plate mark near the inner binding, a few have light spots, otherwise in good condition.