IMAGES OF LOTUS LAND: THE LIFE                 and CAMERA WORK OF

*  T. ENAMI  *

 JAPAN'S ENIGMATIC PHOTOGRAPHER

      Of the MEIJI and TAISHO ERAS

       King of the Stereoview, Master of the Lantern-Slide,                               Prolific, Anonymous Contributor                                To the World of Meiji-era Yokohama Album Views,                                   Dedicated Street Photographer,                                                                      and                                                           Honored Alumni of National Geographic Magazine                

                                                PHOTOGRAPHER                                          NOBUKUNI  ENAMI                                                                         (1859-1929)

     The above formal portrait of Japanese Photographer T. Enami was probably taken ca.1912-13 when Enami was about 55 years old.  The original being lost, it is reproduced here from a halftone illustration published in K. Ogawa's 1913 book SOGYO KINEN SANJU NEN SHI  [A Celebration of Thirty Years in the Photography Business] --- a commemorative book detailing the history of K. Ogawa's photography business that, among other things, provided portraits of the photographers and associate members of the K. Ogawa Alumni Association. 

    This publication also contains many other one-of-a-kind images from K. Ogawa's life and times, including one showing T. Enami in an outdoor group portrait, seated with many of his contemporaries. This important document was re-discovered by professional photographer and photo-historian Torin Boyd in 1994. In 2006, Terry Bennett became the first to republish the portrait in his best-selling book  PHOTOGRAPHY IN JAPAN - 1853-1912.

     K. OGAWA and T. ENAMI

      Early documentation is scant, but Japanese photo-historians state that the minimal references to Enami indicate he learned the art and science of photography from the well known photographer and collotypist K. Ogawa.

    In all post-1950 Japanese and Western sources that mention him, Enami is variously called either a "disciple", "student", or sometimes an "assistant" of Ogawa. Both men were born in Edo-Bakumatsu-era Tokyo, which was then called Edo, or Yedo.

    Studio dates imply that the Student-Teacher relationship began while K. Ogawa and Enami were still both in their twenties. They maintained a professional relationship for most of their lives.  The K of K. Ogawa's name is discussed further below. More about Enami and Ogawa is found on page two of this Website.

     A LESSON IN JAPANESE -- THEN, AND NOW

     The old, pre-WW2-style Japanese name characters under the above photo read from right to left --- the opposite direction from English --- in the customary "family-name-first" Japanese way of writing and saying a persons name: Enami Nobukuni.     

     After WW2 and until today, Japanese names are still spoken and written "family-name-first"; but, as part of sweeping language revisions made by the Japanese Ministry of Education, horizontally-written Japanese (such as Enami's name under the above photo) is now written from left to right ---  in line with direction of standard English.

   江 南   信 國 = E Nami  Nobu Kuni = Enami Nobukuni.

     The  T.  part his T. Enami name will be explained in just a moment.

     In the meantime, it might surprise some to know that when translating Japanese names for a Western audience --- be it for business cards or publication in a book --- for well over 100 years, it has been the accepted custom of professional Japanese-English translators and translation teams to follow the Western name order of placing family names last.

     That is to say, "translating" means taking how something is said in one language, and then re-writing it as it would be said in another language. Although there are exceptions to that general rule, preserving original Japanese name order is NOT one of them. If you are properly translating a Japanese name into English, you write it (or say it) the English (or Western) way.

   Thus, the Japanese Enami Nobukuni becomes Nobukuni Enami in English, French, German, Swedish, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, and etc.

     Both on this Website and in any Western publication, Nobukuni Enami is the correct way to write Mr. Enami's full, real name. In the same way, all other Japanese names on this site are also written in Western name order.

     Western publications and documents that cater to the original Japanese name order when giving full Japanese names --- by placing the Family Name first --- sound quite scholarly in print, but actually violate the real-world rules and customs of Japanese-to-English translation.

     Fortunately for both sides, the Japanese don't really care (and nobody in Japan ever gets bent out of shape) over what order Westerners might chose to write Japanese names. [Note: Strangely, the Japanese prefer Westerners to keep their native name order even when converted it into Japanese kana characters.  Thus, Tom Cruise in English will remain Tom Cruise in Japanese!]

     With the exception of the name KIMBEI (photographer Kimbei Kusakabe's first name), all other one-word name references on this site are the photographers last names (both Japanese and Westerners) --- TAMAMURA, OGAWA, BEATO, SUZUKI, FARSARI, KAJIMA, and etc.

                                               " T."

     So, if T. Enami's first name was Nobukuni, why didn't he call himself N. Enami when he wrote his name using the Alphabet?  The answer is simple.  Enami replaced the N. with a T. to make his photographer's Trade Name.  If you think about it, this was a far less drastic change than that made by the author Samuel Clemens who took Mark Twain for his now-famous pen name !

     Why did Enami pick the letter T. ? CURRENT BEST ANSWER : The T. might have stood for the nickname Toshi, which happens to be an alternate reading of Nobu, which was the first character of his real name. Enami's own grandson, who was himself not sure about the T., agreed to the same possibility.  In any case, while Toshi remains the best bet, no one knows for sure.                                                                                

     "T. Enami" never appears in the Japanese language,

and was only used in Alphabet form for himself, his studio sign, and the various imprints found on the private and commercial images sold out of his studio. 

     Although Enami was enlisted as an Imperial Army Photographer during the Russo-Japan War (1904-05), his business was primarily aimed at foreign tourists and the commercial stock photo market. As you look around this site, the details of this will eventually be stumbled across, as well as many other interesting tid-bits about old "photographic Japan".

     For those wishing to see T. Enami dressed in something more "Japanese" than the Western-style suit he is wearing above, on the second page of this Website you can see two portraits of him taken about 15 years earlier than the above photo, wearing some old Samurai armor --- or, you can immediately see one of the photos on flickr.com by clicking HERE.

                                                                The above image shows T. Enami's studio at No.9 Benten Street in Yokohama, ca.1905. He was       located here from 1892-1923, moving to a new address on Benten Street after the above                  location was destroyed by the Great Earthquake and Fire of September 1st, 1923. This hand-            colored collotype postcard is also shown on page two of this Website (SERVICES page), along          with more commentary and a "TODAY" shot taken from the same camera standpoint in 2006.           An older street scene showing his studio appears there as well.

                                            T. Enami's business card, ca.1895-1905

                                          UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED                                                        ALL PHOTOGRAPHS APPEARING ON THIS                               WEBSITE ARE BY T. ENAMI                                       AND WERE SCANNED DIRECTLY FROM HIS ORIGINAL LANTERN-SLIDES,                                     PRINTS, STEREOVIEWS, and POSTCARDS. 

              ALL TINTS AND COLORS WERE DONE BY HAND, APPLIED TO THE                 ORIGINAL BLACK & WHITE ALBUMEN AND GELATIN SILVER PRINTS BY                                 COLORISTS WORKING IN T. ENAMI'S STUDIO.

     ► RIGHT-CLICK ON ANY PHOTO TO "VIEW IMAGE" AT A LARGER SIZE ◄

        Any Illustration May Be Downloaded for Blog,         Non-Profit, and Fair Use. Thanks in Advance                for Proper Source Credit or Link-Back.

      PURPLE FUJI FROM THE KASHIWABARA MARSHES.   Ca.1892-5 Hand-colored Albumen Print

    FROM A FORGOTTEN NOBODY...            ...TO A RE-DISCOVERED SOMEBODY                                              

 
In her Introduction to THE HISTORY OF JAPANESE PHOTOGRAPHY (Yale University Press, 2003), Anne Tucker begins with the words "What we know about the history of photography is less than what remains to be discovered...", and ends her many pages of valuable comments with, "...The questions yet to be answered are endless". Those two observations are very true, and offer an acceptable explanation of why Enami's name (along with many other early Japanese photographers) appear nowhere between the covers of her excellent book.                                           

                          Mount Fuji and the Boatmen of Kashiwabara.      Ca.1898-1903                             

     During the few short years since the above book was published, Enami has become one of those whose mysterious name has been cleared of the fog that once surrounded him, and his place now well-defined in the mainstream of early Japanese photographic history.

     In the past, Enami was simply one of well over a thousand studio and photographer imprints from the Bakumatsu and Meiji eras for whom there was little or no known history.

      After WW2, Japanese photo researchers published a short, four-line mention of him without any biographical data. This was followed in 1991 by an "Appendix of Yokohama Photographers"  in another Japanese book, where photo historian Takio Saito listed several old business directories wherein Enami's name and studio address were found. (Continued after illustrations)

                              ABOVE : Original, hand-colored Meiji-era stereoview ca.1898-1908

                    BELOW:  A full half-stereoview variant print taken from a different                                             angle around the curve of the bluff. Packets of these half-stereoview                                          images were sold by Enami to late-Meiji and Taisho-era tourists.                                                The small contact prints were used to augment the travelers own                                              "Kodak Moments" when putting together scrapbooks and photo albums                                        to show the folks back home.

     However, there was still no biographical data, and in both of the above books, no examples of his work were shown. An investigation revealed that -- even as late as 2006 -- the Yokohama Archives of History that published the data was not familiar with his work, and their vast collection of photographs had no identified Enami images.

Meanwhile, in the West, small nuggets of information were occasionally found for him. He was first mentioned by photo-historian Clark Worswick in 1979, and in 1988, Frances Fralin of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC made an honorable attempt at a one paragraph biography to accompany certain of his images found in the archives of the National Geographic Society.

     Beyond that, certain confusing aspects of Enami's name, and a dearth of critical data became a wall preventing further investigation. Strangely, a great divide existed between those who held collections of his accredited images, and those who held only documents and dates. Unfortunately, these two sides never seemed to meet. 

     In both East and West, Enami remained an Enigma. 

     Finally, in 2006, thanks to Enami's own descendants, several breakthroughs occurred. Revelations supplied by his kin acted as a catalyst that almost immediately allowed the scattered data and images to coalesce into a meaningful whole. Individual efforts by collectors and historians were suddenly harmonized, while old "sticky questions" were provided with answers.                                                                                

     The 2009 discovery of Enami's Meiji-era albumen print and lantern-slide catalog served to remove speculation surrounding a large number of images that shared certain number and title styles with other photographers.

                  A cropped portion of Enami's very abstract Umbrella Farm. Ca.1910-20

     Since this emergence from the general fog that once obscured him, Enami has shown himself to be full of surprises. Also, along with this sudden ability to identify without question a large body of his photographs, we are now able to see him and his work in the context of his more famous contemporaries -- many turning out to be his friends, with whom he shared his labors.

In effect, this recent establishment of Enami as a major player in the world of early Japanese photography is part of the ongoing "discovery" that Anne Tucker alluded to.

This website is intended as a friendly tribute to Enami; giving an informal, yet information-filled look at his life and images. It also adds illustrated balance and further data to the Enami essay and biography found in Terry Bennett's info-packed OLD JAPANESE PHOTOGRAPHS: COLLECTORS'DATA GUIDE (London. Quaritch, 2006), and finally clears the air of the interesting speculations mused upon in Bennett's even more colorful sister publication, PHOTOGRAPHY IN JAPAN: 1853-1912 (Tuttle, 2006).

     The Webmaster highly recommends all of the above books for a wealth of amazing, illustrated stories from the world of early Japanese photography.                         

         ABOVE :  Love at First Sight in the Fields of Old Japan. Ca.1915-22 gelatin silver print.                  After over 20 years as a studio and commercial photographer, Enami's transformation                   into a "street photographer" using hand-held cameras during the early Taisho era revealed               his certain ability to get many of his subjects relax and smile for the camera. This set of               Enami photos is full of such unreserved candor. 

            BELOW : Four ca.1892-1899 studio and scenic studies. The Umbrella Girl image, taken                 twenty years or more before the above photo of the smiling farm girls, is discussed on                   page two of this Website.

         ABOVE :  Four Lantern-Slide images from Enami's 1892-1905 mid-to-late Meiji period.

                           MORE T. ENAMI                                                             ON (AND OFF) THE WEB

         

For those who might take a liking to Enami's Meiji-era photos, and would like to see (or just know about) other collections of his work beside the images seen on this Website and Flickr, the list below will get you started :

(1)  NAGASAKI UNIVERSITY LIBRARY COLLECTION has a set of 49 beautiful T. Enami lantern-slides. At the link below, type the number 98 into the left-most space of the Cabinet search box, then Click the search button. 50 thumbnails will appear — click again on any of them for a better look ! [NOTE : Image No.5067 is not by Enami, leaving 49 views that are by him. The site still lists ALL of the Enami images as "Photographer: Unknown"].

     oldphoto.lb.nagasaki-u.ac.jp/en/cabinet.html

     The four screen shots shown below are samples of what you should be looking at once you navigate the few steps needed to get into the Enami Collection.  I am posting these in accordance with non-profit fair use copyright rules for review, promotion, and explanation of the Nagasaki University Library Collection.

     You might see some Enami views on the Nagasaki Site (and on the other sites listed below) that appear to be exact copies of images posted here on the t-enami.org site, and at the extension sets on Flickr.                                     However, if you compare them closely, you will see that they are "worked up" differently by Enami and his studio colorists as they made them one-by-one, over a century ago.

     As you can see the above hand-colored lantern-slide image in the NUL was made by Enami from a half-stereoview. In this case, a close "session variant" was used.

    During the Meiji era (prior to 1912), all of Enami's lantern-slides were reductions from the large glass negatives used to make the "Yokohama Album View" prints, or from half-stereoview glass negatives. It would not be until the Taisho era (1912-26) that Enami began adding images from 2-D stock believed to have been taken with roll-film cameras. 

                                     Below : A couple of FIRE and ICE images by T. Enami

           T. Enami's photographs are all accompanied by interesting descriptions, explanations,                      and historic notations written by the Library staff and researchers.

           Right-click on the images to view in a larger, readable size. Please visit the Nagasaki                    Library's "Metadata Database" for more of the same !

(2)  KANAGAWA UNIVERSITY LIBRARY [KUL] has 59 Enami stereoviews held in a special archive room. The images are all black and white, and mounted on his earlier beige-colored card stock. Previously uploaded to the Web in 2009, they were removed in mid-2010. As of this writing, they have not re-appeared.

                        Screen Shots from Kanagawa University Library's on-line posting of their T. Enami                         stereoview collection. Grabbed for fair, non-profit use to illustrate and promote                       the T. Enami content of their Library collection. Like most Enami 3-D images found                       in collections around the world, careful composition and processing are self-evident.                       [NOTE: Use of the openly published KUL scans is allowed under current copyright                         law pertaining to unmodified digital scans of pre-1923 public domain images, defined                     by summary judgment handed down in the case of Bridgeman vs.Corel.]     

     It is important to note that most of Enami's stereoviews are imprinted with SOLD ONLY BY T. ENAMI (as opposed to a more solid PHOTOGRAPHED BY T. ENAMI). "Sold by" certainly allows for the possibility that these images were photographed by someone else, and only published (or sold) by Enami. Although it is now known that Enami was also the author of his own stereoviews (and that he seems to have borrowed the "Sold Only By..." imprint from his main American distributor), some not familiar with this situation might still suffer a "misdirect" by the wording on the mounts.

     Perhaps this is one of the reasons why, at the time they were posted, the Librarian or Curator of the KUL decided to attribute all of Enami's images to the foreign photographer FELIX BEATO.  Prior to posting the images, there was text-only notification that the Library held images by T. ENAMI. But when they posted the images, Enami's name was entirely deleted from the sight, and replaced with full credit being given to BEATO.

Since the stereoviews are currently not available to view on line (except for the four "screen grabs" you see here), let's discuss the University's attribution of these views to the illustrious Beato --- an attribution with which there are a few problems. Namely...

     (1) Felix Beato photographed his Japanese images in the 1860s and 70s, long before Enami opened his studio, (2) Beato only made prints by the albumen process, and all of the Enami stereoviews in their collection are gelatin silver prints, and (3) There is no evidence that Beato ever photographed or published stereoview images of Japan --- or any other location. Those three points would not matter, of course, if Enami was printing his views from a rare and secret stock of old Beato stereo-negatives that no one knew about. However, that possibility can be dispensed with because (4) Beato was not in Japan during the later, datable content of Enami's stereoviews.

                The ABOVE view from the Kanagawa University Library Collection can be                             seen in color HERE. It is also discussed on the next page of this site.

                The BELOW view from the KUL is followed by a hand colored image on                                glass from the Webmaster's collection.            

      Even though Enami's name is on every mount of the stereoviews in the Kanagawa University Collection (and his work and biographical info now found all over the Web) the well-meaning but "Google-Shy" photo-archivist of this Japanese University apparently didn't believe that one of their own could take such nice photos, and --- in spite of the above-mentioned problems --- made an out-of-the-blue decision to attribute them to the pioneering Beato.

     FRIENDLY ADVICE : If you are an archivist, curator, photo-librarian, or a scholar of photographic history, doing just a bit more homework might save you from accidentally attributing a box of 1895-to-1910 Japanese-subject gelatin silver prints to the late, great Felix Beato !

     The below link to the photos in now inoperable, but will take you to the former page that hosted the images.

   klibredb.lib.kanagawa-u.ac.jp/dspace/items-by-author?auth...                    

 
(3) The PRESBYTERIAN ARCHIVES in New Zealand has a fine collection of over 80 Enami lantern-slides --- which they have uploaded to the Web as a Collection on Flickr. Their large Enami archive of general and dedicated categories may be seen in its entirety, including two rather rare and beautiful series on SILK and TEA production :

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pcanzarchives/collections/72157624458409751/

 

(4) The ROBERT CORNELY COLLECTION of old Enami lantern slides may be seen here. Click a TAB, then click on a PIC :

   historicartimages.com/scenesofmeiji/index.html

(5) The UNIVERSITY OF OREGON holds the huge Gertrude Bass Warner Collection of nearly 5,500 "mixed photographer" lantern-slides from Enami's day and age. She was a definite "slide nut" (in a good way, of course) and hauled back quite a bit of photographs from Japan.

    The University has posted 93 sample lantern-slides from among the 5,500 they have, and that narrow slice holds many identified T. Enami views.

    Simple extrapolation allows us to speculate that Enami makes up a valuable part of the archives images. See how many Enami photographs you can spot on the many pages of samples posted here :

   libweb.uoregon.edu/speccoll/photo/warner/fWarner.html

(6) The UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON LIBRARIES houses the Helen Ford Collection of over 300 Enami slides. None are posted on line. However, a concise description of the collection is given here :

   www.lib.washington.edu/specialcoll/findaids/docs/photosgr...

(7) The PEABODY ESSEX MUSEUM has over 50 beautiful Enami slides, none posted on line at their own site. However, they gave kind permission to post some examples here on my PEM Set in this Collections group. Thanks, PEM !

   http://www.flickr.com/photos/24443965@N08/sets/72157613945016316/  

 


(8) The GEORGE EASTMAN HOUSE INTERNATIONAL MUSEUM OF PHOTOGRAPHY also has a beautiful collection of about two dozen beautifully hand-colored stereoviews (many that I've not seen elsewhere), as well as about 50 equally beautiful lantern slides. At the moment, all of these images are off line.

(9) The ROYAL GORGE REGIONAL MUSEUM & HISTORY CENTER in Cañon City, Colorado has a collection of over 50 Enami slides.  At the moment, these images are off line.

(10) The PHOTOGUIDE.JP Website, written and hosted by Philbert Ono has what is probably the earliest, modern-day article about T. Enami. Written in 1997 and appearing in DARUMA Magazine, it is reproduced at this link, and includes a few of the Enami images that appeared in the more extensively illustrated paper version:

    http://photoguide.jp/txt/T._Enami

(11)  The CALIFORNIA MUSEUM OF PHOTOGRAPHY in Riverside houses many beautiful, rare, and important collections of unique images spanning the history of photography. One of their many collections just happens to be the worlds largest gathering of original 19th and 20th Century stereoview negatives and original contact proof prints --- all with original photographer and/or publisher numbers and notations.

    http://www.cmp.ucr.edu/

      Known as the KEYSTONE-MAST COLLECTION, it is a massive gold mine of original 3-D negatives and ephemera from the KEYSTONE VIEW COMPANY that formerly resided in Meadville, Pennsylvania.

     Although the collection once held over 2,000,000 negatives, the greater part were destroyed during the 1930s. However, the quarter-million or so negatives that remain are a vast treasure trove of classic, beautiful 3-D imagery. Hidden amongst the several thousand negatives and prints of old Japan are numerous works by T. Enami. 

     In 2009, with the kind help of curator Leigh Gleason, the process of identifying the T. Enami stereo-negatives had a good start. Over 100 of his stereoscopic images were identified on former T.W. INGERSOLL and C.H. GRAVES production  negatives. The glass negative stocks of these stereoview publishers (and many companies like them) had been acquired long ago by the Keystone View Company.

     Of course, none of Enami's views are identified as such on the prints and negatives, and like many other images in the collection, struggle for correct photographer attributions. In Enami's case, his images are now recognized by matching with verified Enami prints found in other collections, verified studio props, and by more interesting and definitive means such as checking the negatives for "septum markings"  that are unique to Enami's cameras.

     The "septum marking" key only applied to Enami's earlier work, and came as a great revelation while I was hunched over the old glass negatives as they sat on a light box in a research room of the archive. 

     Other negative series and markings revealed that a few views I once thought might be by Enami turned out to be by H.G. Ponting, and a few C.H. Graves Co. negatives that I thought were taken by Ponting turned out to be by T. Enami ! Further, some Underwood & Underwood Co. Japan views that had been nominally attributed to Ponting turned out instead to be by James Ricalton.

    The value of the California Museum of Photography collection for both publishers needing classic 2-D and 3-D worldwide images, and those doing primary research in many areas of photographic history cannot be stressed enough. 

    Having only scratched the surface of what the Museum holds, there is much more work to be done, with potentially 100s more T. ENAMI negatives to be found. The picturesque results will be published when the Webmaster either (1) wins the Powerball Lottery, or (2) receives other grants or funding to finish the work.

         The California Museum of Photography --- "Mother of all Stereoview Archives".

The extensive CMP "Mother Lode" is the only place in the world where original 3-D negatives of many classic T. ENAMI views can be found. Thanks to a few of his 3-D fans and photographer friends who obtained these glass copy negatives directly from Enami over 100 years ago (for use in their own published stereoview lines), we now have another window through which the early history of Japanese photography can be seen --- high-quality, professional stereo images taken from a Japanese point of view.

Please note that confirmation of the existence of Enami's negatives in the CMP occurred in late 2009. They are currently mixed in with the works of American, British, and Australian photographers, and have not yet been individually marked, cataloged, linked, listed, or filed away in any manner with T. ENAMI's name on them.

Revision of the CMP database to recognize Enami as the author of these scattered images will happen just as soon as the Webmaster stumbles on a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

In the meantime, the value of these original, high-resolution glass copy negatives has now became immeasurable. It must be remembered that Enami's studio and his entire 30-year archive of negatives was wiped from the face of the Earth in the Great Earthquake and firestorm of 1923.

Confirming the existence of these negatives over 85 years later is nothing short of amazing. After hiding quietly for so many years --- since at least the 1920s in the "Negative Archive" of Keystone's old headquarters in Meadville, Pa.; and now since the late 1970s in the climate-controlled vaults the CMP --- Enami artifacts once thought long gone have now risen from the ashes.

      MANY OTHER INSTITUTIONS known for housing Art and Photography collections post a lot of their material on line. As their Enami content becomes known, I will post the links here.

          A SIDE-NOTE ABOUT ENAMI'S TEACHER                      -- THE PHOTOGRAPHER K. OGAWA --                AND SCHOLARLY ISSUES WITH HIS FIRST NAME

     In an oblique way, The Kanagawa University's attribution of Enami's stereoviews to Felix Beato (see No.2 on the above list) reminds me of what was once a seeming endless parade of Western "Japanese Photo Historians" who, when confronted with hundreds of Japanese photos and photo-books imprinted with the name K. OGAWA, proceed to tell us --- on the pages of numerous Photo Histories published during the past several decades --- that the K. for Ogawa's first name stood for ISSHIN. 

              ISSHIN ???

These authors must have been consulting with the bearded fortune teller seen in this T. Enami photograph to the left.

How so-called scholars can declare that the letter K stands for a name beginning with the letter I --- when Ogawa is telling us that his name begins with a K --- is beyond mortal comprehension. However, the Webmaster is fully acquainted with enough Scholars who are so caught up in the "Publish or Perish" mode that the obvious occasionally escapes their notice. 

NOTE TO ALL WESTERN SCHOLARS OF THE JAPANESE LANGUAGE : K. Ogawa himself provided (on every photo mount and book imprint) a blatant hint as to how he pronounced and wrote the Japanese characters of his first name.

That hint is the letter K...as in...K !   K. OGAWA ! Yes, that looks like a K !

     For you budding scholars of Japanese Photo History who are blessed with a PC, PLEASE right-click on the above thumbnails (one-by-one), and "view image"  to be enlightened by three documents of the time, all addressed to K. Ogawa from officials representing the USA, THAILAND, and ITALY, thanking him for his wonderful photographs.  Please note what is underlined in red, burn it into your brain, and from henceforth do not copy the work of other "scholars" who were once confused about such basic things as the letters of the Roman Alphabet.

    Of course, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that this whole ISSHIN thing might have gotten started way back in 1893, when someone with only a rudimentary understanding of Japanese name characters decided to ignore the K and go with something called onyomi --- a hybrid, Sino-Japanese reading of Ogawa's name to approximate a Chinese pronunciation with a Japanese hillbilly accent --- writing ISSHIN for KAZUMASA on a Certificate awarded to K. OGAWA after he won a GOLD MEDAL for photographs that were on display at the Chicago Exposition.

     The same mistake was repeated (or copied --- by the same judging panel?) in 1904 when K. Ogawa received an award for his "Colored Photographs".  After that, nobody in the West questioned the oddity, but, to the contrary, continued to repeat it.

 
If our "linguist" had been consistent, he could have written the onyomi SHOUSEN for OGAWA, transforming K. OGAWA into ISSHIN SHOUSEN.

In any event, I'm sure that Ogawa was thrilled to get the award, and forgiving of the now-forgotten Westerner's odd attempt at saying (and writing) his name.

    Fortunately, many others have gotten it right, including the on-line WIKIPEDIA which also acknowledges the pseudo-scholarly "OGAWA ISSHIN" that is still floating around out there.

    I only bring these things up because K. OGAWA was T. ENAMI'S teacher, and he figures in the Enami story given on the second page of this Website.

             The very first photo you see when entering the T. Enami Website homepage is his                        photo of three boys playing with a boat on a small canal in Yokohama. Here is the                         full stereoview version published in the USA. At the top is a real-photo version first                      published ca.1903 by THE INGERSOLL VIEW COMPANY, and below is the SEARS,                       ROEBUCK & COMPANY lithograph version first published in 1905.

            BELOW : A ca.1898-99 T. Enami 3-D view that sold well in the USA from 1900 on.                        Considered more humorous than offensive, Victorian prudery was no barricade to                           allowing the image a place in many household collections of stereoviews. From 1900                     through 1907, Griffith & Griffith published hundreds of T. Enami stereoviews on                            their own mounts.  I have included a half-stereoview crop, framed in gold,                                     ready to be hung on the wall of your favorite Family Room or Church Foyer.

BUTT

NAKED

JAPAN !!

For all of you spiritual, discriminating men and women who have developed a taste for fine images depicting the lovely human form made in the image of God himself, here is a bare-assed Japanese Priest taking a bucket- bath over at the local well. And a very fine well it is.

                    Early cabinet mount imprint from ca.1898-1905. One of many to be found.

Please note that this Website is not a formal, scholarly presentation of the information currently known about Enami. Some subjects are not covered, while other subjects of possible interest or importance receive only scant attention. Where things are delved into in greater detail, the commentary does not included footnotes, and only occasionally mentions primary sources.

Why is that ?  Well, because....

......A book about Enami and his Meiji-era photographic world is currently being written that will include all of the history, stories, and more that is missing from this Website.  Sources, footnotes, and a comprehensive bibliography that form the basis for this on-line "snapshot" will also be provided.

Because the publication date is not yet known (and could take another year or two) the purpose of this transient Website is to provide an immediate free source of general information to augment that which has already been published by Terry Bennett in 2006.

Since Bennett's books have already formally introduced T. Enami to the world,  I have nothing better to do here than (1) add some new information that has come to light since 2006, and (2) show you a huge pile of Enami's photos (which Bennett's book could not do), while continuing work on the book which will be extensively dedicated to T. Enami.

The Web-gallery and data provided here does not in any way take the wind out of the book currently being written. As for pictures, this is one Website where no one can say there are not enough photos to look at !

Here and there, you will find several scattered links and written leads to help you find other information on your own. In the meantime, if I make an unsubstantiated statement that causes you to lose sleep, please contact me, and I will tell you where the particular primary information was found. 

           GEISHA AND MAIKO on a SHADY VERANDA.  A fine study of two old session variants

RIGHT :  The Sanjo Bridge over the Kamo River in old Kyoto. Notice the people under the shade of the bridge, enjoying food and drink while sitting on low platforms built only inches above the cool running waters.                      

BELOW : Whereas most 19th Century photographers who took similar shots would pack up and leave at this point, Enami was one of only a few who actually climbed down under the bridge to record the goings-on close up. And he was the only photographer known to have done it in 3-D.

Such under-the-bridge dining is prohibited in present-day Japan.

  The above is an un-transposed 3-D proof print. It can free-viewed using the "cross-eyed method".

ENAMI'S GRANDSON, KEISUKE

Although I have been collecting and enjoying the photographs taken by T. Enami for many years, and had at one time built up a mountain of theory and speculation about the man, it was not until meeting Enami's grandson, Keisuke, in the fall of 2006, that many things became clear.

                      Keisuke provided the key biographical details about his grandfather, clearing up some of the main mysteries surrounding the ENAMI name, and what actually happened to the Yokohama studio on Benten Street.

Keisuke's contributions toward a better understanding of Enami and his times appear in Bennett's DATA GUIDE which was already mentioned in the above introduction, as well as in comments scattered throughout this site.

Keisuke succumbed to illness, passing away at age 75 on October 25th, 2008.

He is survived by his wife Ryoko (a talented calligrapher), and two sons. His daughter-in-law, Chiemi, is a musician and teacher in Yokohama.

               Here is a 2006 image of Keisuke Enami                     and his Wife posted on Flickr

Two Boys Plowing a Field on the Plains of Mt. Fuji.  By T. Enami, ca.1910-20.  From a Lantern slide.

                       The Tea Pickers.    Ca.1898-1900 Vignette from a hand-colored stereoview.

Those interested in Enami's biography, acquaintances, photographic accomplishments, and more examples of his photography may go right to the heavily illustrated  MAIN STORY + PHOTO HISTORY PAGE

                        HERE.

Those wanting just a quick, one-page, no-frills account of T. Enami can go directly to Philbert Ono's PHOTOGUIDE JAPAN  entry HERE,

.....or the WIKIPEDIA entry HERE.  Although I wrote the Wikipedia entry on Enami, I would like to thank their editors for kindly formatting it to fit their Website.

                       A Horse Wearing Sandals, and One Gal Good to Go.      Ca.1892-95

                     PHOTOS ONLY, PLEASE !!!

For those only wanting (or needing) to look at a huge archive of his old photos (over 700 !), the "Mother Lode" of Enami images posted on the Web is now found HERE. 

                 Ca.1892-96 early studio view of an itinerant pipe seller and repairman.

Below, you will find an odd assortment of random information about things on this site, as well as many more SAMPLE PHOTOGRAPHS all by T. Enami. The MAIN STORY & PHOTOGRAPHIC HISTORY PAGE (at the "Services" button on the side bar near the top of this page) has even more photos to scroll through and enjoy.

        

     ABOVE:  Ca.1895-98. Shell Pickers on Negishi Honmoku Flats, two miles south of Yokohama.

       BELOW: Variant of above Enami image published ca.1904-05 by George Rose of Australia

    MANY PHOTOGRAPHERS AND PUBLISHERS USED ENAMI'S STEREOVIEWS       IN PART OR IN WHOLE. FOR GEORGE ROSE ABOVE, ENAMI'S IMAGES               FORMED ONLY A LESSER PART OF HIS JAPAN SERIES. FOR MANY OTHERS,     INCLUDING INGERSOLL AND SEARS (BELOW), ENAMI'S IMAGES MADE UP       100% OF THEIR ENTIRE SETS OF JAPAN STEREOVIEWS.

    Looking at Stereoviews and an Album of Photos in T. Enami's Yokohama Studio.                          Ca.1898 image printed ca.1906-10 as a three-color litho. From the best-selling 1905-10 Sears,        Roebuck & Company issue of their 100-view JAPAN Set --- all of which were photographed by            T. Enami. Sears obtained the 3-D images in a round-about way from T.W. Ingersoll, who was          already publishing them as real-photo views. Sears first run of the set was in 1905, and had          white borders. From 1906, they added the colored borders seen above, as well as fully-                 printed descriptions on the back.

      Two Geisha and a Maiko in the Middle --- can't get enough of those T. ENAMI STEREOVIEWS !!!         Ca.1898 hand-colored photograph taken in Enami's studio on Benten Street in Yokohama. 

September 1st,  2010

Dear Visitor,

         On this page and the MAIN STORY page, you will find, with some minor over-lap, over 250 random photos by T. ENAMI. With some noted exceptions, almost everything has been scanned  directly from the original 2-D and 3-D photographs captured by Enami with his studio and field cameras. In addition (on the second page) some comparative photos by his contemporaries are posted in the section that discusses the 1897 "Brinkley Sets".

         Did I just say "over 250 old Japanese photo illustrations" ? YES !

         On these two long-scrolling Web pages, you will receive the visual equivalent of more than FIVE nice Souvenir Photo Albums from the late Meiji era ! On top of that, a few photos of old ads, graphics, and mount imprints are posted as well.  Let no one say this Website skimps on giving you old photos of Japan to look at, study, and use !

As already mentioned, well over 700 images photographed and published by T. Enami have been posted on the flickr.com site HERE. 

Anybody can visit the flickr site and see this large sampling of his photos, including hundreds not seen on this Enami Website. Most are available for inspection at larger sizes.

All of these photos --- both here and on flickr.com --- are CREATIVE COMMONS licensed for bloggers and Webmasters who might  want or need for illustration purposes.  Of course, there are also those creative types who like to extract portions of the images for making cards and collages. Please help yourself to the image (or images) you need for your project, art class, or homework assignment. 

Also at the flickr site you will also find over 1,000 additional old pictures of Japan by other Meiji and Taisho-era photographers. They are scattered amongst these titled SETS, and you will have to dig for them !  Much of what you will see is quite beautiful, and none of it exists today as you see it in the photos. One set titled THEN AND NOW shows a few of the changes that have taken place over the past century of more --- some of it quite drastic

 Again, the photos are free to use. Permission is already granted to either grab them from this site, or to download them from flickr.com 

For those images pulled from Flickr, their guidelines ask that you make the photos linkable back to flickr. These copy/paste URLs are at the ALL SIZES button over the photos.

Although the original, pre-1923 T. Enami images used to make the posted scans are now WELL OUT OF COPYRIGHT, and in the PUBLIC DOMAIN, still, I thank you in advance for the civilized courtesy of providing a resource credit line somewhere; there might be others who want to know where the pictures can be found for their own use or further study.

        BUCKETS n' BRUSHES n' BROOMS, OH MY !   This ca.1892-96 hand-colored T. ENAMI albumen       print was used as a full-page, real-photo illustration in Captain Brinkley's magnificent 1897             publication JAPAN - DESCRIBED AND ILLUSTRATED BY THE JAPANESE. Enami's neighbor,          KOZABURO TAMAMURA, published a similar view of the same man and his broom cart,                   photographed on a different day. In the Enami view above, you will notice that the vendor is            looking right at you. In Tamamura's photo, he is looking off to the left. In any case, a great             study by either photographer.

All told (on flickr.com and elsewhere) that's well over 750 verified T. Enami views (and a few studio imprints) to keep things covered for a while.

For those bothered or concerned about the "disorganized" nature of this site, I have few words addressing this situation just under the large GEISHA IN A FLOWER GARDEN photo, found about a dozen more images below.

                   BELOW : The UCHWA Fan Makers in 1890s Japan. More Uchiwa HERE.

                         YOU CAN NOW...

 Go to the MAIN STORY PAGE HERE , or continue looking at more nice photos by T. Enami and other Website background information below.

               Enami catered mainly to the local foreign community and transient tourists.                                 His catalog advertised portrait-taking services, and examples showing different                           mount and imprint styles are many.                                 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Ca.1904. The Japanese Naval Ship ASAMA in Yokohama Harbor waiting for                            Emperor Meiji to come aboard. A scene during the Russo-Japan War.

                                  The Clam Digger.         Ca.1915-22 Gelatin Silver Print

        THE DUST BUSTER. A 1920s Water Wagon Works to Keep the Dirt Down and The Air Clean.

                               Ca.1898-1907. Beach Boys Catching the Spray from Breaking Surf. Vignette from a half-stereoview

                                                 Ca.1898.  Five Geisha and a Cat.

     Ca.1892-95. The Hot Tea Vendor    From a Lantern Slide. Also published as a large albumen.

    

  Ca. 1892-95.  The Daiya River in Rural Japan.  Hand-tinted Enami Lantern-Slide + Variant Print

    Enami published the above slide with the circular matte just as you see it. The variant           albumen print [Enami Catalog No.150] is seen with more discussion HERE.

            Kids at Kitano Temple in Kyoto                                               Ca.1898 - 1907

             REFRESHING AND SURPRISING 

          For those already familiar with the work of early Japanese Photographers such as Shimooka, Kimbei, K. Ogawa, Esaki, Kajima, Suzuki, Tamamura (and many others covered by Japanese Photo-Histories published in the West), the material presented on this site should prove a bit refreshing, and sometimes surprising. It is a small tribute to one whose activities and portfolio occasionally transcended the work of his more famous contemporaries mentioned above, leaving collectors and connoisseurs of the Japanese image with a wide range of new material to discover and enjoy.

                   Two Geisha and friends in the Horikiri Iris Garden of Tokyo. A three-color halftone                        rendition of a hand-colored, full half stereoview. Printed and Published in England                   in 1922 as one of eight full page color plates illustrating the JAPAN entry fo J.A.                  Hammerton's encyclopedic PEOPLE  OF ALL NATIONS. All plates were chosen                         from T. Enami's ca.1898-1907 series of real-photo stereoviews. This was a popular                        seller in all countries of the British Empire, giving Enami's photographs worldwide                         exposure in huge numbers. The catch ? They were all mistakenly credited to the                            Reverend Walter Weston, a British Missionary who also happened to be good friends                      with Enami. Enami must have been quite let down. How embarrassing for Weston !

DISORGANIZED, BUT COMPLETELY FREE PHOTOS, INFORMATION, AND COMMENTARY. PLEASE EAT THE MEAT, AND SPIT OUT THE BONES

          The images and text are tossed on these pages in a hodge-podge manner, and meant to provide a basic, yet sufficient introduction to the formats, style, and range of this often-anonymous Meiji-era Japanese photographer. There is no index or permalinking of subjects to help you find your way here.  Instead, Use the EDIT - FIND function on your tool bar to get to a story or some needed data.

          In other words, this Website is what you call a "Gift Horse with Warts", and was not written for researchers or looky-loos with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder who need it all laid out in perfect order in order before you can glean something from it !These pages are simply a free repository for odd Enami information as it becomes known, while the more orderly hard-copy book (at greater expense to you) is being written. In the meantime, there are plenty of gold nuggets to be found here, but you will have to dig them out by yourself ! (Finally, a Website that puts you to work ! Enjoy your discoveries !)

               Meeting at the Gate.  Photographed ca.1898 at the entrance to a Japanese Inn near the                   Genkyu Gardens 玄宮園 of Hikone. Certainly one of Enami's most popular images, it                     was originally a stereoview which is seen and discussed HERE. Please note that original                 images are actually much smaller than appears on your monitor. Although the technical                  and artistic abilities of Enami's studio colorists are evident in the above lantern-slide,                    such detailed care is evident across most of the small-format images produced by                        Enami's studio during the last 20 years of the Meiji era....and beyond.

                             Ca.1898. Kids under Cherry Blossoms ina Yokohama Park

              Baskets n' Brooms n' Shovels n' Scoops.         Ca.1898-1905 Household Goods Store.     

                        Ca1898. Man and Horse on the Lone Pine Road. Vignette from a half-Stereoview.                         This is the only image on this site that is not a confirmed Enami image. It is                           included here as an "attributed" Enami view. It was found in a composite set of                             stereoviews having other confirmed T. Enami images, and conforms to his style.                            It will remain in the "attributed" category until confirmed...which may be never !

                    Bashful Babes in the Bamboo Bushes near Yokohama.  Ca.1898-1905

       
        Ca.1895-98  Japanese Ladies out for a Jinrikisha Ride, Same location as THIS VIEW.

        
                        The Bamboo Alley of Old Kyoto.                       Ca.1898-1905

             Ca.1898.  Kendo Kids.                             Vignette from the above stereoview.                                                                                                                                                      Most all of Enami's stereoviews can stand alone as excellent 2-D prints and lantern-slides.

      THE WEBSITE ILLUSTRATIONS

With the exception of the the formal portrait of Enami at the top of this page (attributed by the webmaster to an unknown photographer's assistant at K. Ogawa's studio, or perhaps photographed by K. Ogawa himself), all of the photos on this site are scanned from the original albumens, gelatin silver prints, and lantern-slides.

Enami's portrait at the top of this page is from a halftone illustration published in K. Ogawa's 1913 book Sogyo Kinen Sanju Nenshi [A Celebration of Thirty Years in the Photography Business]. 

This book, containing many other one-of-a-kind images from K. Ogawa's life and times was re-discovered by professional photographer and photo-historian Torin Boyd back in 1994. He was kind enough to send me a copy of the T. Enami portrait (one of only three close images showing Enami that I am aware of) as well as an image showing Enami seated with many other photographers in an outdoor group portrait of the Ogawa Alumni Association. It came out just fine considering it's a SCAN of a XEROX of a HALFTONE made from a long lost PHOTOGRAPH !

The same portrait originating from Boyd's personal copy of the "K. Ogawa Bible" (as he calls it) was first reprinted [republished] by Terry Bennett in both volumes of his 2006 set of Japanese Photo Histories already mentioned in the introduction at the top of this page. 

The rest of the vintage photos appearing on this site are all hand-finished, original works belonging to the webmaster.                       

For hi-rez fanatics, please access the flickr.com links already provided further above.

Scans from glass lantern-slides, with a few instructive exceptions, do not show the binding tape or labels (however, where masked borders are shown, they are the original shapes). All "color photographs" are actually black-and-white images that were hand tinted in Enami's studio. Each image was laboriously worked on for many hours (some say one to three images a day) while being looked at through a magnifying glass, and the tints applied by fine brushes, some as thin as a single hair.

For the images on this site, and those appearing on Flickr.com, at least five different scanners and three different digital cameras were used for the scan / copy work. Slide copying was done against different light boxes of different color temperature. Therefore, all color and tone rendition both here and on FLICKr should be considered approximate.

Regardless of how some images take to being pixilated on your screen, most of the originals are pin sharp. Except for some uniform matting of stereoview mounts, and occasional straight and vignette cropping to produce half-stereoviews for enlargement, the image content itself is posted "as is".

                 Ca.1898.  On the Road to Nikko.            Vignette from a half-stereoview.

        
 ABOVE:  Ca.1898. Japanese Sleeping Style. During the 1870s through the 1890s, Japanese photographers offered many versions of these generic "Sleeping Geisha" images for their title lists. To Westerners, the title implies that the day is done, dinner is over, the sun long set, and all visitors have gone home.

The stereoview above shows his effort to bring on the "darkness of night", in line with what most purchasers of his views would consider the proper time to "hit the sack". The stereoview is taken during the day, but in what appears to be a real house. Full negative prints reveal that there is a true ceiling there rather than a raised studio space.

Yet, as seen BELOW, during Enami's earlier days, he photographed such "sleeping" subjects utilizing a full "sleeping-during-the-daytime" skylight illumination from top to bottom. Enami was, of course, following the lighting styles already established by earlier photographers, including his famous teacher K.Ogawa. He soon got out of that mode, and aimed for the more realistic lighting as seen in the stereoview above.

           
            Ca.1915   Mount Fuji through Pines.                            Hand-tinted lantern-slide.

                      The Cormorant Fisherman. From a ca.1898-1907 untransposed stereoview                                     contact proof print.

                            Ca.1895-98 Kinkaku-Ji [The Golden Temple], Kyoto.

            Ca.1898.  The Sumo Match.                             Vignette from a half-stereoview.

            Notice the ladders for access to the balcony bleachers in this rural outdoor venue.

Long an enigmatic figure, and difficult to pin down, T. Enami has, for the better part of a century, inadvertently (and understandably) been omitted from almost all modern Photo-histories of Japan. However, as the picture of who he was and what he accomplished became clear, it also became apparent that his continued exclusion from modern accounts of Japan's photographic past could no longer be justified. In 2006, the first major discussion of Enami and his work finally appeared in two related scholarly photo-history books about Japan (listed further below).

          We now know that his artistic and documentary record was seen by millions during the Meiji and Taisho eras. It has also come to light (more than once) that in some ways his varied activities surpassed the contributions made by many of his well-known contemporaries. 

As you read the story, at some point you may think, How did we miss this guy?  On the other hand, after having the images of Beato, Stillfried, Kimbei, Ogawa, Farsari, and Tamamura rehashed to the bone in numerous scholarly works, it's nice to have someone "new" come along with a portfolio that has barely been tapped , and cleared of the fog that has generally obscured him. 

                        Ca.1898-1907. Group of Sumo Wrestlers with Ceremonial Garb.

                            Ca.1898-99. Getting into the Act.               Vignette from a half-stereoview.

   ABOVE :  Ca.1898 "Drying Tea Leaves". Enami's Japanese made Lantern-slide produced from           the same 3-D negative used in American to make the BELOW well-worn "Boiling Tea Leaves"          stereoview. The difference in quality between Enami's first generation "positive print on glass"        and what is probably a second-generation American print on paper is quite evident here.  Also         notice the irreconcilable difference between the two captions. The slide caption is correct.

        The abridged and certified  MAIN STORY of T. Enami found HERE is for all those dealers, collectors, and photo-history buffs interested in Japanese "things photographic". Aspiring curators and editors who will eventually (and inevitably) produce other comprehensive photo-histories (or gallery arrays) of early Japanese images, will find among Enami's wide-ranging portfolio any number of possibilities for expanding your story line and visual presentation.

          The term "certified" as used above means the author worked from.....            

           (1) primary sources and documents in the Japanese language;

          (2) Western books and documents with his accredited images;

          (3) interviews with living descendants who accessed legal records for the sake of this story, and provided personal anecdote from memory;

          (4) Enami's original  [English] Catalog of Print and Lantern-Slide numbers and titles.

          (5) direct observation of a large amount the T. Enami images listed in the above catalog.

         (6) imprinted commercial images --- such as stereoviews, lantern slides, private studio portraits carryincarrying his imprint, and

         (7) uncataloged* un-titled, un-imprinted images verified as his by unique studio props found in the images.

         (8) Enami's original price lists that included all printing paper types and formats offered by his Yokohama studio.

        *  It should be noted here that many of Enami's images appearing in the old "Yokohama Albums" originally had numbers and captions somewhere at the bottom that were cut off for aesthetic or other reasons during the mounting process. In these cases, I am calling such views "uncataloged", but this simply means I have not yet been able to match them to their true catalog numbers. In many cases, the views eventually show up elsewhere (either as lantern-slides or prints) with the number and titles still attached.

          As this is not a formal, scholarly presentation of the information (this site is intentionally lacking footnotes and a bibliography) I will reserve the inclusion of most of the above sources and catalog listings for a future hard-copy presentation of the material.  However, some references will be found embedded in the text.

         
             Ca.1908-15.Praying Priest between Pillar and Post.            From a Lantern-slide.

                                    (Variants of this view have been noted)

      Ca.1892-95. The Old Junk. Lantern-slide from an Albumen Print. The above ship image is one of two variants known (Enami only published this one). This was a Public Domain image even at that time. The photo is not  by by Enami, but was included by him in his official catalog. Only a handful of such "acquired" images appear among the more than 860 Japanese flat-print images published by Enami. (His listing of large format prints of the Philippines pushed the printed catalog to over 960 images).

It is quite possible that a handful of views such as above were "gifted" or "sold" to Enami by fellow photographers upon his start-up in Yokohama. In particular, it seems that Tamamura, Kimbei, Ogawa, and possibly others gave him "rights" to some of their generic images to help launch his own catalog of original views. However, these images --- no matter what the source --- are very few, and some are identifiable. Interestingly, I have noted at least one image that was published concurrently by Kimbei, Tamamura, Enami --- and maybe Farsari and Suzuki --- all with different negative numbers ! This is the NAGOYA CASTLE image posted a little bit below.

By percentage, Enami's catalog was much "cleaner" than that of Kimbei, whose initial inclusion of many Beato and Stillfried images made his own early commercial stock a potpourri of foreign and local talent.  

                    Ca.1898-1900 Studio Shenanigans.        Vignette from a half-stereoview.

                     Ca.1898. Ready for Rain or Snow.                    Vignette from a half-stereoview.

           UNTRANSPOSED STEREOVIEW              CONTACT PROOFS FROM                     ENAMI'S YOKOHAMA STUDIO

    The top stereoview may be seen as a hand colored slide amongst the images posted below.

    You might be interested in seeing some more annotated, stereoview proof-sheets from Enami's original Meiji-era studio that had been safely stored outside of Japan prior to the great earthquake of 1923. A nice sampling of these are shown in a special flickr.com set HERE.

 Again, only Enami provides us with such historic photo-ephemera from old Japan.

  THE T. ENAMI CATALOG OF CLASSIC         19th CENTURY ALBUM VIEWS

         While having made visual inspection of nearly 2,000 small-format Enami related images, I could only do the same for about 200 of his larger albumen prints. Making up for this relative dearth of classic album views available for study on my side of the fence, British photo historian Terry Bennett independently spent many years in England and France viewing private collections of Enami-attributed material --- much of it in albums that were lacking Enami's wet-stamp, yet offered other clues in the images themselves. Bennett's efforts and intuition resulted in a huge and valuable list of nearly 400 Enami's album-view numbers and titles.

         But, without an Enami catalog from his own studio, how accurate could Bennett really be ?

         At that time (prior to 2006), an actual Enami-published catalog of his own views was unknown; in fact, it was presumed not to exist. It was thought that if such a thing had ever been published, it surely would have been found by now, given the large number of his clientele, and popular distribution of his images. Of course, not having a catalog would have been the norm, as almost every Meiji-era Japanese photographer of prominence --- with the notable exception of Kimbei Kusakabe --- was, as far as we know, without a printed catalog of their commercially produced album views.

         However, this is no longer the case. As of 2009, Enami now joins the illustrious Kimbei as a member of that rare club of old Japanese photographers with a known catalog. Further, Enami accompanied his catalog with a price list for a wide range of his formats, papers, sizes, and quantities. Enami's catalog will be published in full in the projected hard-copy book being written about him.

         Although the listing of album views is far larger than the number given in Bennett's hard-earned accounting of Enami's work, Enami's catalog has also revealed that Bennett's list was, for the most part, free of error --- an amazing feat considering the similarity of numbers and font style between Enami's work and the work of others of his day. Kudos to Terry Bennett !

         Today, in spite of the discovery of Enami's printed catalog listing hundreds of formerly unknown titles, the number of visually recognized and inspected Enami images has only increased by about 100 views since Bennett's Data Guide was published in 2006. Hundreds more numbered and cataloged album views still remain "out there" to be found, and hopefully offered to the institutional and collecting world as "newly recognized" works by Enami. 

  WHEN AN ENAMI VIEW IS NOT AN ENAMI VIEW
 

         It should be noted that -- as with KIMBEI and others during the late Meiji-era -- "published by" did not always mean "photographed by".

         Enami is known to have cataloged and published only a small handful of views that were not photographed by him --- yet these were far less than the number of Kimbei-published views that were not photographed by Kimbei ! That is to say, concerning studio/photographer attribution, Enami's output was much "purer" than that of the Kimbei studio.

         Below is one of these Enami-published (but not by Enami) images.

       
       Ca. 1892-94  Nagoya Castle. Large albumen print. This generic view is one of Enami's earliest cataloged images, it is often found attributed to or published by others, and appears with many different numbers stripped into the negative. I am of the opinion that it was taken by KIMBEI, and one of only a small handful of views given or licensed to Enami to help him in his Yokohama studio start-up. 

      The rest of the images to the end of this Web page are all by Enami's own camera.      

Ca.1898. The Daibutsu at Kamakura.  Rather than focus on the statue by taking a more common "head on" shot, Enami climbed back into the gardens on the side, making the Great Buddha a supporting actor to the depth and composition of the scene. Herbert Ponting, who would later photograph this site for many American stereoview publishers, followed the same indirect style of approach to the statue, possibly being inspired by Enami's own images to do so.

In the old days, it was fairly easy to climb up on the statue to have your picture taken in any ridiculous pose you desired. Those days are (unfortunately) long gone.  However, anyone may still go inside this hollow, hulking hunk of bronze, and, after your eyes get used to the relative darkness, see the graffiti of the ages written by both Japanese and foreign visitors on the metallic walls of the inner belly. .

         

         Into the Mist. Lone Pilgrim on a Mountain Trail.  Photographed ca.1898-1908 by T. ENAMI.                The particular slide above was printed later in Enami's studio, ca.1925-30 from the earlier                image. The above is one of two known images taken along the same trail. The other may              be seen HERE on flickr.

           Some of the material appearing on this Site was complied during the years 2004-2006, and served as a basis for the T. Enami essay and broader 3-D Index appearing in Terry Bennett's Old Japanese Photographs: Collectors' Data Guide (London: Quaritch, 2006). Also in that book will be found Bennett's own valuable listing of 100s of numbers and titles for known Enami album views—a number that continues to grow.

             Bennett's larger work, Photography in Japan 1853-1912 (North Clarendon: Tuttle, 2006) also contains a nicely illustrated chapter on T. Enami, the first of its kind in any Japanese photo-history. This book is not only beautiful to look at, but a fascinating and detailed tour of early Japanese photography in general. While T. Enami is incorrectly called Enami Tamotsu in the Chapter headings and text, this understandable error—common among all pre-2007 resources where Enami is mentioned—was quickly corrected in Bennett's own Data Guide after Enami’s grandson finally cleared up the confusion. Both books are recommended for those wishing more detail, and more extensive bibliographic references than are found embedded in the story presented here.

          All Bennett publications may be viewed (and ordered) HERE

 Ca. 1892-95 The above lantern-slide images represent some of Enami's earliest studies including people. The black mask shapes are originals by Enami. On the second page of this Website (The Main Story page at the "Services" button) a later version of the above slide may be seen with a "square" matte.

The image of the priests with their "umbrella man" is one of over twenty T. Enami images used by Burton Holmes to illustrate the Japan portion of his best-selling, multi-volume Travelogue series. The early book sets, first published in 1901, were careful to credit all photographers whose images filled the pages; however, this one slipped by without credit.

For Holmes' book, the plate-makers removed all background material in the image, leaving only the four figures with their umbrella. Such image manipulation was common in a era where the old artists and engravers were being called on to prepare half-tone plates from photographs. (Such an image appearing a "wood engraving" would also most likely have the background highly simplified, or removed entirely). 

After many years, the Travelogue publisher erased all photographer credit lines from beneath the images. This eventually led some later publications that used the Burton Holmes Collection to erroneously attribute to Holmes the work of many Japanese (and some American) photographers. Holmes biographer, Genoa Caldwell, has done much to correct these errors of attribution.

                       Ca.1898. A Geisha Amongst the Lilies.            Lantern-slide from a half-stereoview.

              Ca.1898. On the Crater's Lip. Mt. Asama.                Hand-tinted lantern-Slide.

                      Ca.1898.  No Time for Play.                     Vignette from a half-stereoview.

         At several places throughout this Site, some seemingly extravagant or inflated claims will be made for Enami, yet all such boasting on his behalf is squarely backed up by data that is now being complied for a book.

          As mentioned, the original T. Enami photographs inserted throughout this site were collected from sources in several countries. Enami's view-list was so great that most any collection of his material will be unique. The particular images used here, while sometimes illustrating the text at hand, are, for the most part, randomly inserted for decorative "gallery" purposes to show Enami's particular styles.

         If you have the ability to "free view" (and in spite of the poor resolution of the screen), the quality and depth of Enami's stereoview compositions will speak for themselves.

        Ca.1907-10. Wayside Rest on the Rustic Road to Fuji. A classic composition in detailed depth.      In 1905-6, British photographer Herbert George Ponting took a similar stereoviews at this exact        same spot. Enami might have seen it, and been inspired to take the same composition with           his own rustic models. The exact timing of this view and a few others that share similarities           with Ponting's views are still under scrutiny. When Ponting first arrived in japan in 1901, it             was he who was inspired by T. Enami's compositions. The two might also have shared a                 camaraderie over the years, and possibly took a 3-D Photo trek together, catching similar views      at the same time for their own respective clientele. This is still in the realm of speculation, and       further research is ongoing.

        For what it's worth, you might be interested to know that—with the exception of seven Japanese documents such as phone books and business directories that simply recorded his name and address in Japanese, and one 1952 listing of Japanese photographers that devotes only four lines to him—the information provided here in English (as well as in Bennett's books published in 2006) is currently far more than what is available to the Japanese in their own language.

      The problems described in the introduction at the top of this page will surely become moot as Japanese photo researchers avail themselves more and more of information and images found on the Web, and the almost ubiquitous software translation services that are now able to automatically translate Web pages such as these back into the Japanese language --- and their own web-published information into our languages.

    Click HERE for the illustrated MAIN STORY PAGE on T. Enami.

                                                                                  
Ca.1892-95 Sanmaibashi. Lantern-slide. Compare tones and tint with albumen print version below. 

                              Vignette of a stereoview image posted further above.

          Ca.1905-15. The Great Torii at Miyajima.                 Vignette from a lantern-slide.

             Ca.1898. Porcelain Crafters.                            Vignette from a half-stereoview.

                   Ca. 1910-15   Young Girl with Fisherman.                           Hand-tinted lantern-slide. 

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