Sights and Scenes in Fair Japan.

Tokyo: Imperial Government Railways.. (circa1910).. 50 delicate hand coloured collotype plates on high quality stiff card each captioned in English, presented in Japanese embroidered silk covered boards with tassle ties, All edges gilt., patterned gilt endpapers.The hinges of each image have been professionally repaired with Japanese paper and wheat starch paste. Neat pencilled annotations lower corners, leaves clean and bright. 26 x 38cm. This beautiful album proved very popular and was reprinted a number of times, in some editions all of the plates are in colour, as is the case with this copy, and at other times the edition only shows some plates in colour and while the others are in black and white. The work also appears in editions both with and without 2 maps, later editions in Western bindings.

Although his name does not appear in this album it seems highly likely that this album was published by Ogawa Kazumasa (1860-1929). Described by Terry Bennett in his excellent work Japanese Photography in Japan 1850 - 1912 as a "Pivotal figure in early Japanese photography. He adapted cutting-edge Western technology in photo-printing processes to produce numerous half-tone and collotype publications which transformed the market.."

The interesting and delicate scenes in this album include a number showing Japanese people at leisure, in a street scene, a crowd at a sumo match, people involved in their daily occupations and a number of temples, gardens and other places of interest to the early 20th century visitor to Japan. A very good copy of a charming album. .