Toward a Synthesized History of Photography:

A Conceptual Genealogy of Shashin

Maki Fukuoka

In writing on the history of photography in Japan, scholars commonly note

that the Japanese word shashin ( 写真) conveys different meanings than the
English word photography. While the term shashin existed prior to the intro-
duction of photography in J apan, only in t he 1870s did it become a s table
reference to the technology. Indeed, in the discourse on Japan’s photographic
history, shashin is a c umbersome term that does not yield valuable discus-
sion. And yet shashin casts an unmistakable and enduring symbolic shadow
on the field and is a distinct part of its history.
A recent example appears in t he catalog from the 2003 exhibition, The
History of Japanese Photography, held at the Museum of Fine Arts in Hous-
ton. A dapting a d ominant n arrative s chema t hat p ositions t he h istory o f
photography in J apan as an entity both mirroring and diverting from the
technology’s “Western history,” the design of the catalog itself foregrounds

positions 18:3 doi 10.1215/10679847-2010-015

Copyright 2010 by Duke University Press
positions 18:3 Winter 2010 572

the term shashin: every chapter begins with a black page on which the two
Chinese characters of shashin appear in white calligraphy. Taking the term
to be neither equivalent nor comparable to “photography,” these pages serve
as the thematic and visual thread that unifies the catalog, while the essays
elide discussion of the relationship between the two terms altogether.1 Oth-
ers have argued that before photography, shashin signified something akin
to “realism,” a nd halted t heir investigations t here, without excavating t he
pertinence of such pictorial styles, as if a relationship between photography
and these styles is made evident by their mere insinuation.
The term shashin first appeared in China, and has long been introduced
into the Japanese discourses of aesthetic evaluation, along with the concepts
shai ( 写意) a nd shasei ( 写生). W hile s cholars h ave delineated t he multiple
historical a nd s emantic m eanings o f t hese t erms, focusing o n t he s econd
Chinese character of the three compounds, the fact remains that the ideo-
graphs fo r shin (truth, real, e ssence), i (essence, intuition, u nderstanding),
and sei (life, essence, one’s nature) point to a m etaphysical dimension that
defies c lear l inguistic a nd p hilosophical d emarcation.2 I n t he h istory o f
photography, the use of shashin to mean “camera obscura” is often cited as
the origin of t he close a ssociation b etween t he term a nd t he technology.3
Yet, even in t he 1870s, when shashin became the principle term for photo-
graphic technology — prevailing over words such as ruieiky ( 留影鏡, lens
that holds shadows), in’eiky ( 印影鏡, lens that delineates shadows), or the
phonetic t ransliteration potogurafi — various a pplications o f shashin c on-
tinued to appear, making it difficult to chronicle precisely when and how
the relationship between the concept and the technology became “fixed.”4
This etymology of shashin is particularly curious when we consider that in
England and France, where the technology was invented, new names were
coined specifically for it.5
In t his article, I e lucidate t he complex social life of shashin by examin-
ing i ts u se a nd f unction w ithin a s pecific c ommunity o f s cholars in l ate
Tokugawa Japan.6 Methodologically, I expand the established trajectory of
the history of photography in Japan, and rethink the relationship between
the concept of shashin and this technology. Rather than postulating Japan’s
enthusiastic in terest in p hotography a s s ymptomatic o f “ Westernization,”
I examine t he f unction of t he term shashin a t a h istorical mo ment b efore
Fukuoka ❘ A Synthesized History of Photography: A Conceptual Geneaology of Shashin 573

the arrival of photography, and within the intellectual framework of honz

(本草, Chinese: bencao, L atin: materia me dica), a m edicinal field of study
that h ad b een in troduced f rom C hina. T he t erm shashin a ppeared re gu-
larly in t he diaries, letters, and illustrations of scholars who engaged with
honz, striving to align an understanding of their surrounding natural envi-
ronment with honz’s canonical content. Tracing the circulation of shashin
within this epistemological discourse before the 1850s, when photographic
technology became available in Japan, demonstrates the concrete ways the
term resonated and interacted with pictorial and intellectual activities before
the arrival of photographic technology.
This methodological approach a lso a llows u s to engage h istoriographi-
cally with the “places” of photographic history. On the one hand, by assert-
ing t he h istorical in terplay a mong d ifferent p ictorial m edia a nd t he d is-
cursivity of pictorial representations within a s pecific community, we c an
articulate the relationship of photographic history to that of other pictorial
media (for example, copper-etching technology or ink rubbing) and, more
broadly, w ithin t he c ultural m ilieu o f t he l ate Tokugawa p eriod. O n t he
other hand, historicizing t he concept of shashin using a n interdisciplinary
approach intercalates the history of this concept into contemporary writing
on the history of photography, as well as received narrative of the history of
Japanese visual culture. By opening the topos of intelligibility, to use Michel
de Certeau’s term, I engage with symbolic locations of the history of photog-
raphy through both cultural history and historiography.7

Yanagawa Shunsan’s Yokohama hanjō-ki

Yanagawa S hunsan w as a y oung in structor in t he t ranslation b ureau o f

the Tokugawa bakufu (shogunal administration) when he published Yoko-
hama ha nj-ki ( 横浜繁昌記, A R ecord o f Yokohama P rosperity) in 1 861. I n
his report, Yanagawa wrote of the novel goods and customs he observed in
Yokohama, one of the five ports opened by the bakufu in 1858 to allow for
limited foreign diplomacy and trading. Under the section “yga” ( “洋画,”
“pictures from the West”), Yanagawa refers to photography as shashin k y
(写真鏡). He notes:
positions 18:3 Winter 2010 574

Some say that photography is capable of arresting shadows via chemical

solutions. It joins with the rules of the natural world to the extent that
it is hard to distinguish photographic pictures [from the natural world].
It c an b e said t hat [they] move t he monsters a nd gods to tears with its
earnestness. But others say that although pictures from the West are use-
ful, in regard to the elegance and sophistication, [pictures from the West]
cannot come close the levels of those [pictures] from China, and are far
from them.8
Yanagawa’s sense of bewilderment at photography’s capacity to produce pic-
tures that seem to dissolve into the natural world, coupled with his obser-
vation that photographs could not match the beauty of traditional Chinese
paintings, exemplifies the general reception of photography in Japan during
the Tokugawa period. But he also presents a conundrum: How could pho-
tographic representations also have been perceived as so “earnest” that they
brought out emotive reactions not only from mortal viewers but also from
monsters and gods? Yanagawa’s observation implies that photography inter-
acted with pictorial practices that he characterized as “the rules of natural
world.” Indeed, at a time when photographic images were seen as vastly dif-
ferent from, and indeed incapable of achieving the level of Chinese aesthetic
tradition, why apply a concept that originated in China?
By the time Yanagawa’s book was published in 1861, Ugai Gyokusen had
opened one photographic studio in Yokohama and Shimo’oka Renj another
in 1862. Catering mostly to foreign clients, these studios sold photographic
landscapes and portraits, pictures of political events, and caricatures of Japa-
nese “customs.”9
Yanagawa’s in sightful o bservations c aptured t he o pposing i deas a nd
receptions of photography at t he t ime. S even years later, in 1 867, he pub-
lished Shashin k y zu setsu ( 写真鏡図説, Illustrated B ook on P hotography),
which systematically outlined the process of making photographic images
using the wet-collodion process. Yanagawa’s persistent curiosity about and
amazement at photography led h im to write a h ow-to m anual t hat c om-
bined several European texts to elucidate t he process a nd historical back-
ground of the technology.
Yanagawa’s d escription s erves a s a s tarting p oint for e xploring t he fis-
Fukuoka ❘ A Synthesized History of Photography: A Conceptual Geneaology of Shashin 575

sure of meanings that this term conjured. It enables us to imagine not only
photography’s range of aesthetic a nd c ultural a ssociations at t he t ime but
the contextual environs that both incited and appropriated the term shashin
in the sociocultural landscape of late Tokugawa Japan. Before he relocated
to E do in 1 856, m oreover, Yanagawa h ad a lready b ecome familiar w ith
different uses of the term shashin through his activity as a m ember of the
Shhyaku-sha (嘗百社) in Owari domain (present-day Aichi prefecture).
Attending t o t his g roup’s f requent a nd in terrelated u ses o f t he t erm
shashin, I explore the overlaps and limitations of the term’s fluctuating semi-
otic fields and expose the historical contingency of this significant phase in
the concept’s social life. In the historical materials left by the Shhyaku-sha,
we witness the symbiotic process through which both concept and practice
were shaped a round t he t erm. B ecause t he g roup f unctioned by sharing,
questioning, and securing terminologies to communicate and validate their
understanding of honz, the frequent use of shashin in their studies attests
to the communal and social aspect of the concept. Moreover, their creation
of shashin pictures provides concrete examples of the merge between their
conceptual associations with the term and the kinds of pictorial representa-
tions they produced. In this regard, I pose two central questions: What kind
of pictorial desires did the concept of shashin fulfill? How did the conceptual
and representational shashin solve discursive issues for the Shhyaku-sha?

The Shōhyaku-sha and Their Epistemological Obstacles

Founded in Owari domain by Mizutani Hbun (水谷豊文), the Shhyaku-

sha c onsisted m ainly o f p hysicians w ho p ursued honz, t he s tudy o f t he
medicinal properties of plants, minerals, and animals. In 1828, thirty years
before Yanagawa’s Yokohama hanj-ki, Mizutani put together a set of illus-
trations under the title Honz sh ashin ( 本草写真).10 This manuscript con-
tains fifteen pictorial representations of botanical specimens, including thir-
teen color hand drawings, one ink rubbing, and one monochromatic outline
of a plant. While his use of the word honz in the title clearly designates the
field of study, it is less clear what Mizutani intended by shashin. By tracing
the Shhyaku-sha’s activities and elaborating on the projects the group pur-
sued, it is possible to extricate the connotations of this concept.
positions 18:3 Winter 2010 576

In addition to practicing as a physician in Owari domain, Mizutani was

a noted honz scholar and produced several illustrated books on plants, ani-
mals, fish, and insects, as well as records of his numerous excursions. His 1809
Buppin shikimei ( 物品識名, Clarification on t he Names of Things) matched
the Chinese and Japanese names for natural elements — a significant con-
tribution t o honz d iscourse in w hich c onflicting o pinions e xisted o n t he
relationship between specimens mentioned in Chinese texts and the varied
natural elements found in Japan. Around 1830, Mizutani’s student kchi
Zonshin named the group Shhyaku-sha, after the Chinese god of agricul-
ture a nd medicine, Sin’n ( 神農, Chinese: Shennong), who t asted ( sh, 嘗)
one hundred (hyaku, 百) different plants to find the appropriate herbal rem-
edy for an illness. It was an apt name for the group, combining their goal
of pursuing honz and their propensity to rely on their sensory faculties in
their research.
Mizutani a lso b egan t o o rganize m onthly w orkshops f or p eople in ter-
ested in honz, a nd t ogether w ith o ther m embers h e t ook e xcursions t o
the m ountains t o c ollect n atural s pecimens, w hich h e p resented in r egu-
lar exhibitions called honz-kai ( 本草会). Items on display included potted
plants, living animals and insects, and the minerals and rocks mentioned in
Honz kmoku (本草綱目, Chinese: Bencao Gangmu, English: Compendium
of Materia Medica) by Li Shizen (李時珍), the canonical text of honz ortho-
doxy.11 In addition to those items that conformed to established knowledge
of honz proper, “unnamed” and “unidentifiable” objects were also included
in t hese exhibitions, providing a n opportunity to d iscuss a nd verify t heir
names and properties. The members of the Shhyaku-sha aimed to bridge
their knowledge of honz through observational verification, limiting and
vetting t he t extual w ith in dispensable, reliable s ight. Consequently, t hey
spent less time memorizing and reciting the canon and more directing their
inquisitive gaze to their actual surroundings. These collective efforts to find,
see, and discuss specimens, and to establish a stable correspondence between
Chinese bencao a nd Japanese honz, stemmed from a c oncern to secure a
shared epistemology of honz, to eliminate the confusion caused by varying
regional Japanese names ascribed to plants and other natural elements.
Honz a s p racticed b y t he S hhyaku-sha t hus h inged o n r ejecting t he
Fukuoka ❘ A Synthesized History of Photography: A Conceptual Geneaology of Shashin 577

accepted relationship of symmetry between object and nomination in Chi-

nese bencao a nd honz, o n t he o ne h and, a nd b etween t he availability o f
plants in C hina and Owari, on the other. The fidelity of names to objects
and vice versa, and of imported knowledge to the local living environment,
was what propelled honz forward. T he Shhyaku-sha d id not reject t he
knowledge o f bencao p er s e; r ather, t heir c ritical q uestions were d irected
toward t he relationship b etween bencao a nd t heir own surroundings, t he
applicability of the epistemology of bencao to their immediate context. Miz-
utani’s choice of the term shashin for the title of his booklet, then, is telling
evidence of the circulation and, more important, the resonance of this con-
cept in the configuration of honz in Owari.12
Mizutani’s introduction to Buppin shikimei attests to the complex and con-
voluted intellectual process faced by the Shhyaku-sha. He writes, “There is
an enormous number of natural objects in our country, and it is impossible
to know each one of them. I am jotting down only what I have heard and
seen, in addition to what is ordinarily known. In particular, I was not able
to a ccumulate m any d ialectal n ames, s ince t he r ange o f d ialects in J apa-
nese is rather extensive.”13 His remarks reflect the group’s frustration in its
attempts to stabilize the nomenclature for honz and the nominal confusions
that obstructed their elucidation of the discourse. In this knotty context of
undoing a nd redoing n ames, b oth M izutani a nd It K eisuke ( 伊藤圭介),
who a ssumed l eadership o f t he S hhyaku-sha af ter M izutani’s d eath in
1833, were pioneers in implementing the Linnaean system, a further effort
to establish an unvarying nomenclature for honz.
In The Order of Things, Michel Foucault describes the discourse of natural
history in E urope as “nothing more than the nomination of the visible.”14
He argues that, contrary to common belief, the emanation of natural history
in the seventeenth century should not be attributed to a sudden heightened
interest in nature; rather, its emergence was intrinsically related to the avail-
ability and formulation of a certain episteme that “finds its locus in the gap
that is now opened up between things and words — a silent gap, pure of all
verbal sedimentation, and yet articulated according to the elements of rep-
resentation, those same elements that can now without let or hindrance be
named.”15 Foucault continues:
positions 18:3 Winter 2010 578

We must not see the constitution of natural history, with the empirical
climate in which it develops, as an experiment forcing entry, willy-nilly,
into a k nowledge that was keeping watch on t he t ruth of n ature else-
where; n atural h istory — and t his i s w hy i t a ppeared a t p recisely t his
moment — is the space opened up in representation by an analysis which
is anticipating the possibility of naming; it is the possibility of seeing what
one will be able to say, but what one could not say subsequently, or see at
a distance, if things and words, distinct from one another, did not, from
the very first, communicate in a representation.16
Foucault’s observation casts overlapping shadows on the issues of nomina-
tion that faced the Shhyaku-sha in their pursuit of honz. By asserting the
historicity and structural contingency of a certain episteme, Foucault delin-
eates a space of possibility for natural history between naming and seeing. In
this newly available space, things and words exist as and within representa-
tion. Thus, the discursive features of natural history hinge on pairing the
seeable and the sayable in forms of representation. Following this observa-
tion, the issue of names for the members of the Shhyaku-sha is a nebulous
discursive space of heightened tension, between representational systems of
languages.
What Foucault does not consider, and what was pivotal in the Shhyaku-
sha’s articulation of honz, is the role of pictorial representation in construct-
ing an episteme. The presence of a s ection called “colored pictures” in t he
Shhyaku-sha’s numerous honz-kai gatherings reveals the significant role
played b y p ictorial r epresentation in t he g roup’s p ursuits. I n t heir s ubse-
quent undertakings, the fervid attempt to integrate a L innaean system of
nomenclature is apparent in the Shhyaku-sha’s study of Latin and Dutch,
which made it possible to read the imported European text. The repeated
exercises of copying and revisualizing the illustrations in these publications
went hand-in-hand with the Shhyaku-sha’s absorption of botany and served
their agenda as physicians: to cure patients. Put differently, the Shhyaku-
sha’s a ctivities h elped d issolve t ensions n ot o nly b etween r epresentational
systems of languages but also between pictorialization and visualization.
The introduction of Linnaean nomenclature, a result largely of the tute-
lage of the German physician Philipp Franz von Siebold, provided radically
Fukuoka ❘ A Synthesized History of Photography: A Conceptual Geneaology of Shashin 579

Figure 1 Chart of Twenty- Four Linnaean Classes, from Taisei honzō meiso, Kondō Shūen.
Reprinted with permission of Hōsa Library, Nagoya

different e pistemological a nd r epresentational s ystems. T he p ictorial r ep-

resentations p roduced u nder t his h eterogeneous in tellectual f rame n eces-
sitated a shift in the direction of the observing gaze.
In Taisei honz meiso (泰西本草名疏, Nominal Differentiations in Western
Honz-Gaku, 1829), I t K eisuke in cluded a w oodblock p rint s howing t he
twenty-four classes of the Linnaean system (fig. 1). In this chart, we see the
categorization of specimens into classes, while It’s note informs readers that
the illustrations do not sufficiently address the further classification of orders.
For each class, It indicates the stamen and pistil with abbreviated katakana
characters and directive lines; the names of each specimen are eliminated as
unimportant. The flowers, cut off from their bodies, are isolated against the
blank background and are mostly depicted from slightly above.
positions 18:3 Winter 2010 580

Figure 2 Illustration, from Bencao gangmu, Li Shizhen, 1655.

Reprinted with permission of SOAS (School of Oriental and African
Studies, University of London) library

Here a c omparison t o t he m onochromatic w oodblock i llustrations in

Bencao gangmu is helpful. Plants are represented in this publication in bold
outlines against a blank background, depicting a plant in its entirety, includ-
ing the roots (fig. 2). Compared to illustrations made under the Linnaean
system, the representations in Bencao gangmu stand out for their lack of the
pictorial clues that It sought: namely, the number of pistils and stamens.
The directional shift in observational gaze, moreover, is not limited to the
content of the illustration. As we will see, in the case of the Shhyaku-sha,
Fukuoka ❘ A Synthesized History of Photography: A Conceptual Geneaology of Shashin 581

the epistemological shift occurred in tandem with the introduction of new

pictorial media.
It would be misleading to portray the relationship between these pictures
and the Shhyaku-sha’s effort to reformat the knowledge of honz as pas-
sively reflective. T he relationship w as on the c ontrary a n interactive a nd
reciprocal process of negotiation. The concept of shashin not only partook of
this process but explicitly helped direct the pulling apart and resynthesizing
of t he group’s knowledge of plants — a knowledge t hat drew on Chinese
texts, the Shhyaku-sha’s own experiences, and available publications from
the West. In an environment t hat recognized incongruity of context, and
thus the sterility of the assumption that there would be a symmetrical rela-
tionship between imported Chinese texts on bencao and the local Japanese
context, pictorial representations of plant specimens challenged and enabled
the transformation of the discourse of honz.

The Existence of Specimen and the Concept of Shashin

In the same year that Mizutani put together his booklet Honz shashin, It
Keisuke wrote the following in a letter to Kako Sukeyuki, a physician and
scholar of honz who lived in the distant Shimabara domain: “The Indian
canna resembles the Japanese donge for the most part, and I am enclosing a
shashin and a seed from it with this letter. Mignonette is a particularly rare
kind, and I include a shashin picture as well for you.”17 The surviving shashin
picture of mignonette from this letter is identical to the copper-etching print
in the catalog of a honz-kai gathering hosted by the Shhyaku-sha in 1835
(fig. 3). It uses the term shashin again later in the letter:
I hear that your apprentice Mutsusabur shares your interests and that
he, too, is gradually doing shashin. This is such a pleasure to hear. I had
strongly hoped that someone would search the deep wooded areas and
vast valleys of Satsuma, Hyga, and Chikuzen domains for objects that
have n ot b een s een b efore in p ublic a nd m ake shasei im ages o f t hese
objects. I w as p rivileged t o s ee t he shasei im ages e nclosed in y our l et-
ter and was impressed by their wonderful quality. I a m returning these
images to you with this correspondence.
positions 18:3 Winter 2010 582

Figure 3 “Reseda odorata Linn.” From Honzōkai buppin

mokuroku (1835), Kondō Shūen. Reprinted with permission of
Hōsa Library, Nagoya

Since the shashin pictures of rare objects by Western people are hard to
find, I would very much appreciate it if you could share them with me.18
The term functions in this context as both verb (“doing shashin”) and noun,
referring t o t he a ct o f m aking a p ictorial r epresentation w hile d irectly
observing the object or picture; both uses also occur in t he contemporary
context o f s ketching. F urthermore, w e s ee t he in terchangeability o f t he
terms shasei and shashin.
Fukuoka ❘ A Synthesized History of Photography: A Conceptual Geneaology of Shashin 583

We find a similar example in a letter dating from 1838, seven years after
the one just cited, in w hich It asks Kaku to send him a p ressed leaf of a
bamboo known as chinchiku, a long with a shashin picture of it.19 It ’s u se
of shashin and shasei points to the creation of pictorial representations that
verify the physical existence of the plant. His choice of shashin speaks to his
belief in t he conceptual fitness of the term to configure the field of honz.
Shashin pictures provided pictorial proof that a plant existed, while its nomi-
nal and characteristic attributes were left for further discussion.
In the copper-etching print of mignonette, we are informed of the plant’s
Latin name, Reseda odorata Linn, written in t he Roman alphabet. We also
see a dissected image of its flower that shows the pistil with petal, sepals, and
seeds of the pod near the bottom of the left stem, vital classifying clues for
the Linnaean nomenclature. In the accompanying text of the 1835 honz-kai
gathering, kchi Zonshin provides further account of the plant, noting that
he grew this “Dutch” specimen in his Owari residence. He also speculates as
to a general categorical difference assigned to Reseda odorata Linn under the
Linnaean system. He notes, for instance, that the plant falls under the elev-
enth class, and that there are twelve different varieties of it. He believes that
the plant he grew belongs to the variety that emits a s trong fragrance, and
that although he has heard of its curative properties, he has been unable to
verify this personally. This shashin picture substantiates the fact that kchi
had access to the plant in his home, even as the “knowledge” associated with
it remained in flux. It’s evocation of shashin thus assumes the role of proving
its existence, imbuing t he invisible, yet textually rendered, fidelity between
the representation and the image-maker’s access to the specimen.

Shashin and Copper Etching

The e vocation o f t he t erm shashin in r elation t o c opper e tching s uggests

another level of fidelity that the Shhyaku-sha ascribed to the concept: that
of pictorial testament to a n “original” representation a nd t he faithfulness
of copper etching in a pproximating t his “original.” Here we b egin to s ee
the limits of the fluctuating positions within which the concept operated,
and the imbricated meanings from which shashin’s eventual association with
photographic technology emerged for the Shhyaku-sha.
positions 18:3 Winter 2010 584

The copper-etching print of the mignonette is produced by Kond Shen

(近藤集延), w ho c ollaborated w ith I t o n m any honz-related p rojects,
including the publication of Taisei honz meiso.20 Kond learned the copper-
etching process from Maki Bokusen ( 牧墨僊), an ukiyo- e-trained artist in
Owari domain, and had produced several copper-etched prints. In addition
to t he i llustration of t he m ignonette, Kond also made etchings of a p or-
trait of Carl Peter Thunberg for It’s Taisei honz meiso. Strikingly, none of
his prints were “original” compositions: he made all of them after available
representations.21
Unfortunately, l ittle h istorical m aterial i s a vailable r egarding t he l ife
and activities of Kond Shen. However, two books that Kond’s teacher,
Maki Bokusen, had b een working on at t he t ime illuminate t heir partic-
ular c laims w ith r espect t o t he p ractice o f c opper e tching. A dvertised in
1820, “Taisei shin’ei honz” (泰西真影本草, “Honz from the West in Shin
Shadows”) was to be an ambitious book including “2,048 images in copper
etching reproduced from a book by Carl von Linné,” and Maki character-
izes the copper etching as shin’ei (shin shadows).22 “Shins gaen” ( 真草画苑,
“Illustrated B ook o f S hin a nd S  S tyles”), w ould in clude t wo s tyles o f
illustration — shin and s — each depicting the same subject. According to
an 1815 advertisement for the book, its shin-style illustrations were executed
in copper-etching technology with incredible detail, while the s-style illus-
trations w ere s implified im ages c ontaining o nly “ vital information.”23 In
other words, the copper-etching technology was already embedded in a nd
understood through the concept of shin by Maki.
In fact, Maki’s comment on his own copper-etching prints in Yka seisen
zukai ( 瘍科精選図解, Illustrated B ook o f De tailed S urgical Medicine, 18 20)
reiterates the importance of maintaining fidelity between the “original” and
copied image:
Koshimura Tokki has carefully translated this Heelkundige Onderwyzin-
gen and asked me to copy and pass down all illustrations included in the
book. The illustrations are particularly detailed and so faint that people
of elongated eyes would not have been able to depict them. . . . I n addi-
tion, there is one copper-etching print included in this book that I carved
by hand without looking at the original. When I look at it, I cannot help
Fukuoka ❘ A Synthesized History of Photography: A Conceptual Geneaology of Shashin 585

detesting the print myself because it is so poorly executed. . . . I know nei-

ther a person who can make copper-etching prints properly nor a person
who fully understands the copper-etching technology itself, and I myself
am far behind in mastering this technology. However, I mulled over this
technology and made various speculations. I strongly hope that [my] skill
advances continuously to the point that my prints make the Westerners
doubt whether or not the prints were made by a Westerner.24
Maki realized that one must learn to “see” the copper-etching prints; hav-
ing acquired the s kill, o ne could t hen u se t he m edium t o c onvey d etails
otherwise impossible in other pictorial media. He also notices the deficiency
in technical sophistication of his reproductions compared to “the original”
in Heelkundige Onderwyzingen. Creating prints that might be mistaken for
those of a Westerner becomes for Maki the ultimate goal. Indeed, the lack
of “original” representation was precisely the point at which Maki felt most
vulnerable about h is own skill in c opper etching. Co nversely, t he evalua-
tive qualifications for the shin style, as Maki referred to them, rest on the
exactitude of mimicry, and thus a demonstrated attentiveness to every detail
of “the original.” Put differently, the shin style presumes the existence and
availability of an already re presented model, and the pictorialized, physical
details of the depicted subject.25
Maki’s plans for his publications were ambitious: “Taisei shinei honz”
would c ontain m ore t han t wo t housand c opper-etching p rints, w hile
“Shins gaen” would showcase the differences between detailed and simpli-
fied illustrations of plants. Both would take into consideration differences
in the appearance of pictorial representations, and they would demonstrate
these in t heir illustrations of plant life. His envisioned use of copper etch-
ing p resupposes t hat M aki a pproached t he t echnology a s o ne t hat c ould
meticulously approximate “original” illustrations as other available medi-
ums could not.
Forty years after Maki’s comment, Yanagawa, in Yokohama hanj-ki, also
highlighted the ability of copper-etching prints to convey details, comment-
ing that “each depicted object comes close to shin,”26 and he acknowledged
the need to learn to “see” the images.
positions 18:3 Winter 2010 586

Shin’ei Prints

The prevalent use of the concepts shin and shashin among the Shhyaku-sha
brings u s to a nother pictorial practice in w hich t hey e nthusiastically p ar-
ticipated. The Shhyaku-sha eagerly produced numerous illustrations using
iny-zu-h (印葉図法), a method of printmaking that involves rubbing ink
on b otanical s pecimens a nd t aking a t ransfer f rom t hem. T he e xtensive
use of and reliance on ink-rubbing prints distinguishes the Shhyaku-sha
from other honz groups in t he country. For t heir ink-rubbing prints t he
Shhyaku-sha u sed t he t erm shin’ei ( 真影, shin a s in shashin a nd ei r efer-
ring to shadows). The evocation of ei conveys meaning on both physical and
pictorial levels: t he in k-rubbing im age owes its existence to t he object, in
much the same way shadows do in actuality, and the images resemble shad-
ows in their grayscale tones. Beginning with the founder, Mizutani Hbun,
members such as kubo Masaaki, Niwa Shji, and It Keisuke, and their
collaborators produced numerous shin’ei prints.27
We can a rticulate the in corporation o f the c oncept o f shin i n t hree
instances — the shin’ei images in Maki Bokusen’s unpublished “Taisei shin’ei
honz” a nd in M izutani Hbun’s Honz sh ashin — vis-à-vis other u ses of
shin’ei p rints in t he S hhyaku-sha’s e pistemological q uest. B ecause o f t he
physical contact b etween t he actual specimen a nd print t hat has to o ccur
in the production of shin’ei images, the Shhyaku-sha saw their visualized
fidelity as irrefutable proof of the existence of particular plants. Put differ-
ently, t hese im ages g uaranteed a s n o o ther p ictorial r epresentation c ould
that the subject was available and accessible to the printmaker.28
The striking simplicity of shin’ei prints results from the stark background
and t he c omparatively b are appearance o f t he im ages. I n f act, e xcept for
the few colored images, most shin’ei prints contained only the rubbing and
the handwritten name of the represented plant. The reversed and pressed
contact images remain free of manipulation by the image maker, and thus
shin’ei prints maintain a fidelity between t he impressed plant and its rep-
resentation. In other words, what is represented in t he resulting image is
devoid of human imagination or idealization.
As shin’ei representations approximate the actual sizes of plants and are
direct in k t ransfers o f t he s pecimens, t hey r eassert t he e xistence of e ach
Fukuoka ❘ A Synthesized History of Photography: A Conceptual Geneaology of Shashin 587

plant. Yet this ink-rubbing method did not substitute for or repudiate other
representational means altogether. Although ink rubbing offered advantages
to the Shhyaku-sha that other means of representation could not, the group
continued to utilize a variety of picture-making methods in their pursuit of
honz. From this perspective, the ways that shin’ei prints were used in multi-
media pamphlets showed that these prints served as pictorialized proof of
an existing plant. These personalized booklets presented an assemblage of
the various pieces of information on a specific plant, which simultaneously
paired a nd c ontradicted o ne a nother, a nd vi vidly de monstrated t he c om-
plexity of the constant reformatting of knowledge into a digestible form.
It Keisuke’s Kychikut (夾竹桃, Oleander) demonstrates this point suc-
cinctly (figs. 4, 5, 6, and 7). In it, It incorporated various forms of knowl-
edge r elated t o t he o leander p lant. P asted-in p ages r ipped f rom C hinese
texts complement his short corrections and observations, creating an expan-
sive and diverse collection of knowledge regarding this plant. In this pam-
phlet, the epistemology of oleander expands perpetually, and its limits are
presupposed as boundless. The Linnaean system of nomenclature served as
one axis for arranging knowledge, but It sought other pictorial a nd tex-
tual information that did not necessarily conform to the Linnaean binomial
system.
The first illustration, for instance, was physically taken from Shokubutsu
meijitsu z uk ( 植物名実図考, Illustrated T exts on t he N ame a nd F ruit o f
Plants), p ublished in C hina in 1 848.29 T he n ext p age in cludes a s lightly
larger i llustration t han a ppeared o n t he p revious p age. Various t ypes o f
information followed, including the history of the oleander plant in Japan,
the location of large oleander trees, and excerpts from texts in both Chinese
and Dutch. Latin and Dutch names for oleander are conveyed in katakana
and the Roman alphabet. The texts are sometimes repetitive. For instance,
the explanation of how this plant acquired its Japanese name kychikut is
included in three different places. In other words, there is no singular con-
sensus or r epresentational sy stem — either t extual or pictorial — that d ic-
tates the pamphlet’s discursive structure. Rather, underlying and uniting the
fragmented information is a pervasive sense of uncertainty and the absence
of a totalizing framework.
positions 18:3 Winter 2010 588

For e xample, It w rites (or c opies f rom o ther texts) t he various n ames
given to the oleander plant in Chinese and asserts that although publications
from China c onfuse oleander w ith g arden b alsam, t hese a re t wo d istinct
plants.30 He calls attention to the issue of the plant’s name, citing older pub-
lications that conflict on this point, and the mismatched images and names
in Chinese illustrations. Regardless of whether It wrote this text or copied
it from another publication, his persistent concern with nominal issues and
untiring efforts to correct and stabilize the relationship between plant and
name echoes the larger Shhyaku-sha project of remapping and stabilizing
the knowledge of honz. Another entry from the pamphlet starts with the
history of t he oleander plant in J apan and t hen details its c urative quali-
ties. After mentioning the locations of oleander trees in Owari domain, It
describes the plant’s general physical characteristics, saying that it “grow[s]
three leaves per branch, and the branches grow opposite of each other on the
stem.”31 Put in this context, the purpose of the pamphlet’s pictorial illustra-
tions comes to the fore. Take, for example, two colored illustrations of the
single-petal and double-petal varieties of oleander, with slightly varied hues
of red in the flowers and green in the leaves (figs. 4 and 5). Figure 4 repre-
sents an oleander plant that is depicted in accord with the textual informa-
tion. In figure 5, the treatment of the bifurcation of branches from the stem
contradicts the text: the branches do not grow opposite from one other but
rather alternate. In another illustration, the monotone outlines of oleander
represent varying relational scales for the leaves and flowers (fig. 6), while
the inserted shin’ei prints demonstrate the scale and the leaves growing in a
whorl (fig. 7).
These i nk-rubbing p rints t estify t o t he e xistence o f s pecific o leander
plants, while t he colored sketches a rticulate t he verifiable, visible signs of
the oleander from another perspective altogether. The shin’ei of three leaves
takes advantage of the ability of the ink-transfer method to faithfully repre-
sent the scale of the original plant and offers a visual comparison of varia-
tions in the size of its leaves. The written information, moreover, originates
from both Chinese and Dutch texts, further illustrating It’s effort to for-
mulate an expansive collection of information on the oleander.
In addition, the Shhyaku-sha took the ink-rubbing technique’s ability to
pictorialize the physical contact between subject and representation as testi-
Fukuoka ❘ A Synthesized History of Photography: A Conceptual Geneaology of Shashin 589

Figure 4 Color illustration, from Itō Keisuke’s Oleander. Figure 5 Color illustration, from Itō Keisuke’s Oleander.
Reprinted with permission of Higashiyama Botanical Reprinted with permission of Higashiyama Botanical
Garden Garden

mony of the actual handling of the specimen. The use of ink rubbing takes
full advantage of t he convenience and simplicity of t his pictorial method.
For in stance, in Ezo s akuy m okuroku ( 蝦夷腊葉目録, Catalog o f Pr essed
Leaves from Ezo), It Keisuke relies solely on the ink rubbing to represent
the collection of a herbarium.32 It notes on the cover of this pamphlet that
the prints were made in Edo, when he had access to the herbarium of Ezo
(present-day Hokkaid), and offers the prints as evidence that he saw and
handled the herbarium.
Based on the prerequisites entailed by the production of shin’ei prints, sev-
eral members of the Shhyaku-sha employed the technique as their record-
positions 18:3 Winter 2010 590

Figure 6 Outline drawing, from Itō Keisuke’s Oleander. Figure 7 Shin’ei print, from Itō Keisuke’s Oleander.
Reprinted with permission of Higashiyama Botanical Reprinted with permission of Higashiyama Botanical
Garden Garden

ing method during excursions. The portability and simplicity of the process
meant that the technique could be used to produce irrefutable evidence for
the e xistence o f a v ariety o f p lants. W hile i t i s im possible t o a cquire t he
detailed v isual in formation o f c opper-etching p rints, t heir f aithfulness t o
the existence of a specific plant could not be contested. In other words, while
the knowledge, nomination, and curative qualities of a plant might remain
debatable, the represented form provided pictorialized proof of its existence.
Such uses of ink rubbing are efficient precisely because of the unquestion-
able relationship of indexicality between the representation and the speci-
men from which it was made.
Fukuoka ❘ A Synthesized History of Photography: A Conceptual Geneaology of Shashin 591

The Shhyaku-sha members using ink rubbing recognized both its limi-
tations and advantages. While sculptural aspects of the plant are flattened
and the colors of the dried specimen translated into varying degrees of gray,
the monochromatic and less-defined shapes of the plant serve as a referent
to the occasion of the print’s production.33 In this aspect, there is a s trong
similarity between iny-zu-h a nd taku-hon rubbings ( 拓本, taben in C hi-
nese, literally “ imprinted original”), which were used to preserve t he epi-
taphs of commemorative stones and graves. By applying tanpo over a piece
of rice paper that covered the object, the ink created an image of the etched
depressions, a f aithful reproduction of t he s cripts on t he stone w ith t heir
correct orientation. It produced several small pamphlets of his collection
of old roofing tiles, while another member of the group used the taku-hon
technique to record a honz-kai gathering he organized in 1864. These rep-
resentations fulfilled the purpose of recording but did not extricate the pic-
torial clues necessary for epistemological acuity.
The taku-hon technique had been available for centuries; yet neither those
who pursued honz before the Shhyaku-sha nor their contemporaries else-
where took plants as objects of rubbing. What I want to emphasize here is
the r ole o f h istorically a nd c ontextually r ooted d esires t hat p ropelled t he
activities o f t he S hhyaku-sha, t he s ymbiotic s ynthesis t hat h as t o o ccur
between a s pecific method and its application. In this light, the use of the
ink rubbing is not a technical “invention” per se; rather, it is an innovative
incorporation of the taku-hon technique into the discursive inquiries of the
Shhyaku-sha, rooted in a nd emerging from specific historical and episte-
mological tensions that concerned representational systems.
The ability of shin’ei prints to pictorialize and preserve the physical con-
tact between specimen and representation was a critical epistemological asset
to the project of resynthesizing the discourse of honz. The employment of
shin, as in shin’ei and shashin, illuminates the intellectual currency that the
concept both gained and conveyed, while shin’ei images helped reformat the
epistemological mapping of the world of plants. The Shhyaku-sha’s n eed
to verify the existence of a particular specimen pervaded their activities; in
turn, shin’ei prints provided an assertive response to their inquiries. Correla-
tively, the concept of shin and shashin that came to be associated with copper-
etching prints, sketches, and ink rubbing underwent multilayered processes
positions 18:3 Winter 2010 592

of intellectual challenge, confirmation, a nd authentication. A s tensions in

textual and pictorial representational systems were resolved, the concepts of
shin and shashin congealed and symbolized ideas of fidelity between depicted
subject and print, around which the knowledge of honz pivoted.
Within this epistemological and historical context, we can postulate the
“earnestness” of t he photographic im ages f rom 1861, in w hich Yanagawa
saw a r elationship between photographic image and photographed object.
Yanagawa’s characterization stemmed from his concern for the process and
his a ttention t o t he s pace b etween im age a nd o bject, t he l evel o f fidelity
maintained within this space, rather than the impression gathered from the
photographs in and of themselves.

The Historiographical Issues of Shashin

In 1 852, I inuma Yokusai, a c ollaborator o f t he S hhyaku-sha, b egan t o

study photographic process with the aid of his nephew Kojima Ry’a, who
lived in a n earby village. In 1863, their collaboration resulted in a s uccess-
ful p ortrait of Iinuma a nd h is w ife u sing t he wet-collodion pr ocess; t hey
unhesitatingly referred to the photographic technology as shashin.34 In t he
meantime, It Keisuke continued to incorporate shin’ei prints into his study
as he embarked on his research career at the new Meiji institutions.35 Yana-
gawa’s 1861 comment on photography, then, stems from the moment when
the Shhyaku-sha’s incessant reformatting of honz had achieved a d egree
of clarity, a s compared to M izutani’s Honz sh ashin of t hree decades e ar-
lier. By attending to the tensions that emerged from varied representational
systems — including Linnaean nomenclature, regional names, shin’ei prints,
and copper-etching technology — the Shhyaku-sha were able to overcome
their e pistemological c onfusion. T he r ole o f shashin p ictures w ithin t heir
discourse directed their inquiry into intelligible representations.
The brief sketch of the social life of the term shashin t raced here sheds
new light on the “Westernization narrative” in the history of photography’s
introduction to Japan. The Shhyaku-sha’s intellectual and pictorial prac-
tices, as well as the use of shashin, were neither anchored in nor fostered by
their collective longing for “Westernization.” For them, the goal was to dis-
solve the concrete and local epistemological issues in the discourse of honz.
Fukuoka ❘ A Synthesized History of Photography: A Conceptual Geneaology of Shashin 593

In other words, t hey d id not s et out to bridge a g ap b etween t he “ West”

and themselves. Shashin’s resonance, both conceptually and pictorially, with
their pursuit of honz emerges from their need to verify information regard-
ing the names and availability of particular plants.
I want to call attention here to a f alse pretense that emerges in s ome of
the w ritings o n p hotography in J apan. W hat I find p articularly p erplex-
ing is the assertion by several historians that the illustrations produced by
honz scholars played a role equivalent to photography in the contemporary
context. Furuta Ry, a curator at the National Museum of Modern Art, for
example, u nderstands t he honz illustrations as follows: “The illustrations
used in hakubutsu-gaku discourse [a neologism used to distinguish from tra-
ditional honz by indicating the incorporation of ideas from the West] had
a p urpose — to b e u sed a s m aterial to c onfirm what a d epicted object i s.
For this reason, they are a group of ‘pictures’ that prioritize ‘capturing shin.’
In that sense, one can say that with the introduction of color photography,
time-consuming a nd l abor-intensive c reation o f t hese i llustrations l ost i ts
raison d’être, just as portrait paintings did.”36
The logic that shapes Furuta’s insinuation prescribes the nature of photog-
raphy as a medium that always captures shin ( 真を写す, shin wo utsusu) and
ignores the multiplicity of associations that existed within honz discourse.
Moreover, by assuming the ahistorical meaning of the concept of shin, and
equating it to the innate ability of the photographic medium, identified as
the raison d’être, this assertion champions a unified linear development of
photographic history in Japan. From this perspective, the interrelationship
of photography to other pictorial media can only take a form of comparison
that is contingent on the ascribed unique intrinsic quality of the medium.
These approaches undermine the historicity of the term shashin as well as
the imaginative historical uses of photography in Japan. As I have suggested,
the concept of shashin for the members of the Shhyaku-sha proved fitting
in light of their urgent epistemological stakes. The interlacing aspects of the
concept affected, and were affected by, their persistent pursuit of knowledge
ultimately aimed at curing patients. To situate photographic technology in
conversation w ithin l arger c ultural a nd h istorical c ontexts t hat interacted
with and shaped uses of the technology, and to question the “Westerniza-
tion” model of the Meiji that governs the history of photography in Japan, it
positions 18:3 Winter 2010 594

is vital to ask what was at stake in making photographic and shashin images,
and why the stakes were high at this particular historical moment. Coupled
with t he r ich m aterial a nd monographic records of p hotographic h istory,
this synthesized approach allows us to reimagine the wonder and fear that
photography posed during turbulent years in Japan’s history.

Notes

I h ave b enefited g reatly from t he c omments a nd suggestions of c olleagues who read t he

drafts of this article at various stages. I am especially thankful to Susan Burns, Kevin Carr,
Deirdre de la Cruz, Katsuya Hirano, Leslie Pincus, William Shaeffer, and Joel Snyder. I
also want to thank two anonymous reviewers for positions, who provided insightful com-
ments earlier.
1. Ann Tucker, ed ., The History of Japanese Photography ( New H aven, C T: Yale University
Press, 2003).
2. Sato D shin’s account of historical discrepancies formulated among terms, shashin, shasei,
and sha’i, and their uses within Japanese art historical discourse illuminates the multilay-
ered linguistic backgrounds. Sato Dshin, Meiji kokka to kindai bijutsu (Tokyo: Yoshikawa
Kbunkan, 1999), 2 13 – 22. I mahashi R iko a ttends t o t he c oncept o f shashin a s i t r elates
to t he i ntersections of a rtistic production a nd what she c alls “natural h istory” i n Edo n o
kachga ( Birds a nd Flowers: The R epresentation o f N atural History d uring t he E do Period)
(Tokyo: Sukaidoa, 1995). In discussing Ike Taiga’s approach to shinkeizu, Melinda Takeuchi
translates shin as “true” and argues that “to the eighteenth-century mind, for a topographi-
cal p ainting t o q ualify a s a shinkeizu, a c onscious s ynthesis b y t he a rtist o f t hree e ssen-
tial i ngredients was i mplicitly presumed: shai ( ‘painting t he idea’), shasei ( ‘painting li fe’),
and ikkaku (the artist’s untrammeled personality).” For the literati painters of eighteenth-
century Japan, Takeuchi continues, the concept of shin resonated with the emphasis placed
on the “ ‘truth’ of their own experience of nature, not the way nature appeared objectively
to the eye.” Melinda Takeuchi, Taiga’s True Views: The Language of Landscape Painting in
Eighteenth- Century Japan (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), 144 – 46.
3. In 1788, in Ransetsu benwaku (Correcting Errors about the Dutch), Otsuki Gentaku used the
term shashin ky, combining shashin and ky (“lens”), to refer to the camera obscura.
4. In fact, in Yokohama kaiko kenbunshi, published in 1862, the term shashin ky is used to mean
“camera obscura.”
5. In France i n 1839, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce c alled his i nvention “ heliography,” c ombin-
ing helio, the Greek word for the sun, with graphia, meaning writing, drawing, or graphic
representation. I n t he s ame year, L ouis D aguerre n amed h is i nvention “ daguerreotype,”
stamping his name into the technology itself. An English mathematician and scientist, Wil-
Fukuoka ❘ A Synthesized History of Photography: A Conceptual Geneaology of Shashin 595

liam Henry Fox Talbot, referred to his invention as “photogenic drawings,” also in 1839,
while his collaborator Sir John Herschel used the term photography. Geoffrey Batchen, “The
Naming of Photography ‘A Mass of Metaphor,’ ” History of Photography 17 (1993): 2232.
6. Rather than establishing the origin, or Ursprung, of the concept shashin, this article follows
Foucault’s ideation of genealogy as a d escent, or Herkunft, to “set out to study the begin-
ning — numberless b eginnings w hose f aint t races a nd h ints o f c olor a re r eadily s een b y
an historical eye” and aims to sort out the disparity of the signifying fields of the concept.
Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), 139 – 64.
7. Michel de Certeau, The Writing of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).
8. Kinkei R ojin ( Yanagawa Shunzo), Yokohama h anj-ki, n.p., i n t he U niversity o f Tokyo
Library. For a d etailed account of photography within the social dynamics of the vibrant
port o f Yokohama around t he same p eriod, s ee Sait Takio, Bakumatsu m eiji y okohama
shashinkan monogatari (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kbunkan, 2004).
9. It i s p articularly alarming t hat U gai named h is s tudio “ Ei shin d [ 影真堂],” l iterally
inverting the term shin’ei, which, as I w ill show in this article, the Shhyaku-sha used to
refer t o prints made by i nk r ubbing. A round t he s ame t ime, foreign p hotographers h ad
already b egun t heir commercial operations in t hese p ort towns, a nd t he members of t he
bakufu d elegation w ere p hotographed i n the U nited S tates a nd France. See K inoshita
Naoyuki, Shashin garon (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1994); and Ozawa Kenji, Bakumatsu meiji
no shashin (Tokyo: Chikuma Shob, 1997).
10. Mizutani Hbun, Honz shashin (本草写真), ser. 970, archive, Leiden University Library.
11. Bencao Gangmu was written in 1578 and imported to Japan in 1783. In fact, some of the
sections of the gatherings were exhibited in accord with the order in which the items were
presented in Bencao Gangmu, pointing to this book’s centrality to the study of honz while
simultaneously demonstrating the unresolved identification of the existence of varied objects
in Japan and their corresponding Japanese names.
12. In this respect, the activities in Owari expanded on the concerns for epistemological uni-
fication that figures such as Hiraga Gennai and Sugita Genpaku sought in the late eigh-
teenth century. See Katsuya Hirano, “Spaces of Dissent: Cultural Politics in Late Tokugawa
Japan,” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2004, esp. chap. 5, “Empirical Realism: Politics of
Epistemological Crisis.”
13. Mizutani Hbun, Buppin shikimei (Owari: Eirakud, 1809), 25 – 26.
14. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York:
Vintage, 1994), 132.
15. Ibid., 129 – 30.
16. Ibid., 130.
17. The letter is reproduced in its entirety in End Shji, “Kaho Yki go no Keisuke,” in Kinka
nikki, 12 vols. (Nagoya: Higashiyama Botanical Garden, 1996), 2:87.
positions 18:3 Winter 2010 596

18. Ibid., 86.

19. Ibid., 77 – 82; my emphasis. Kaku Hika (1816 – 94) was born in the Shimabara domain to the
domain’s doctor, Kaku Y’an. Kaku Hika later joined It Keisuke at Koishikawa Botanical
Garden in the early Meiji.
20. Kond Shen and It Keisuke, Taisei h onz meiso (Owari: Kaj, 1829). Yoshida Toshihide
claims t hat Kond Shen was “an important member of t he Shhyaku-sha.” However, I
have been unable to locate materials to demonstrate this assertion. See Yoshida Toshihide,
“Maki Bokusen saikensh,” Nagoyashi bijutsukan kenkyu kiy 1 (1991): 21.
21. The p ortrait o f T hunberg i s t aken dir ectly f rom Voyage d e C . P. T hunberg, a p age t hat
Siebold tore from the book and gave to It while in Dejima, Nagasaki. The copper-etching
print of a leopard also attributed to Kond is made after a painting by Yamamoto Bai’itsu,
a painter in Owari, while the image of a s eal is copied from a d rawing made by another
member of the Shhyaku-sha, kubo Masa’aki.
22. An advertisement placed at the end of Maki Bokusen, Yka seisen zukai (Illustrated Book of
Detailed Surgical Medicine) (Ise: Yamagataya, 1820).
23. An advertisement in Shashin gakuhitsu, in the collection of the Nagoya Municipal Museum.
Maki p assed a way i n 1 824, b efore c ompleting e ither b ook. T he c ause o f h is d eath w as
believed to be accidental ingestion of nitric acid. Nishimura Tei, “Maki Bokusen to chuky
no dbanga,” in Nihon dbangashi ( Tokyo: S homotsu Te nbsha, 1941), 117 – 47.
24. Maki, Yka seisen zukai, n.p.
25. Timon Screech has written extensively on copper-etching technology in eighteenth-century
Japan in his insightful work The Western Scientific Gaze and Popular Imagery in Later Edo
Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Screech employs the concept of pre-
cision throughout his argument, particularly in his discussion of copper-etching technology,
as the underlying value that the Japanese accreditation of ran established in receiving what
he terms “precisionism” i ngrained i n the incoming goods a nd ideas from the West. T he
concept of precision, however, requires installation of a p articular standard against which
the degree of precision is evaluated. While Screech explores the extent and the breadth of
the circulation of the formula equating the “West” with “precisionism” in popular culture,
in regard to the honz-gaku discourse, the association of the copper-etching technology as
a detail-enabling medium rests with the specific desire and need for knowledge based on
Linnaean nomenclature. Screech, Western Scientific Gaze, esp. chap. 4.
26. Yokohama hanj-ki, n.p.
27. Several historians have pointed to Johannes Kniphof’s Botanica in Originali . . . , in which
images were produced by using the “nature printing” method, as the sole publication that
gave rise to the Shhyaku-sha’s practice of ink rubbing. In Botanica in Originali . . . , Kni-
phof pressed botanical specimens between steel and lead plates; by applying colored ink to
the impressed lead plate, he was able to reproduce the copper-etching print of the impression
of the specimen from the indentation on the lead plate. It is still unclear, moreover, when,
how, and who acquired Kniphof’s book in Japan. However, the four surviving hand- copied
Fukuoka ❘ A Synthesized History of Photography: A Conceptual Geneaology of Shashin 597

facsimiles o f K niphof’s b ook, ma de b y l aying a p iece o f t hin r ice p aper o ver K niphof’s
images, attest to the warm reception and popularity of his book among the Shhyaku-sha.
Moreover, it is difficult to ascertain whether all are copied from It’s “original.” There are
direct and indirect methods of creating shin’ei. In the direct method, the desired specimen
is first pressed between papers for some time; sumi ink is then applied to the object, which
is overlaid with a p iece of paper. By pressing the paper slightly over the inked object, the
direct method produces a mirror image of the object in bilateral symmetry. In the indirect
method, a piece of paper is laid over the specimen, and a tanpo (cotton ball) soaked in sumi
ink is tapped lightly over the specimen, so that the overlaid paper absorbs the ink.
28. In this light, these ink-rubbing prints are exemplary of the Peircian notion of “index” as a
sign physically connected to an object. One can readily point to theoretical interconnections
among the shin’ei prints, the Shhyaku-sha’s desire to make these prints, and one of the most
prevailing points of contention in the theories of photography and cinema — the so-called
indexicality of the media. But proving such a connection would require more rigorous and
thorough analysis than space limitations allow here. I will only postulate in this article that
the prevalence of ink rubbing, the application of shin to these prints, and the eventual nam-
ing of photography as shashin by members of the Shhyaku-sha all point to the historical
associations the latter cultivated and embraced through their pursuit of honz. For debates
surrounding the issue of indexicality and photography, see the special issue of differences:
trace and sign vol. 18, no. 1 (2007); Joel Snyder, “Picturing Vision,” Critical Inquiry 6 (1980):
499 – 526; and James Elkins, ed., Photography Theory (London: Routledge, 2005).
29. Wu Qijun, Shokubutsu meijitsu zuk (1848). It added Japanese names and republished the
book under the same title in 1885 with the assistance of Ono Yoshitsune.
30. It Keisuke, Kychikut, n.p., in It Keisuke Collection at the Higashiyama Botanical Gar-
den, Nagoya.
31. Ibid., n.p.
32. In the It Keisuke collection at the Higashiyama Botanical Garden.
33. kubo M asa’aki, o ne o f t he m ost a vid p ractitioners o f t his m ethod, n oted t hat i t c ould
hardly render the thickness of a leaf. kubo Masa’aki, “kubo Sensei Somokufu,” in the
collection of Kyu Shoya, Osaka.
34. Iinuma Yokusai S eitan Nihyakunen K inenshi Hensh Iinkai, ed., Iinuma Yokusai (G ifu:
Iinuma Yoksuai Seitan Nihyakunen Kinen Jigykai, 1984).
35. Sugimoto Isao, It Keisuke (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kbunkan, 1960), esp. 225 – 300.
36. Furuta Ry, “Jukyseiki no hakubutsu zufu,” in National Science Museum, ed., Nihon no
hakubutsu zufu (Tokyo: Tkai University Press, 2001), 44. Kagesato Tetsur asserts a similar
relationship between photography and illustrations in natural history books, claiming that
these pictures also had to be “ free” and recorded “accurately.” K agesato Tetsur, “ Naga-
sakikei yfga,” Gendai no me, no. 372 (November 1985): 4.
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