Kajima Seibei

Kajima Seibei's Life and the "Photographic Magnate"

Kajima Seibei was born in 1866 as Masanosuke, the second son of Kajima Seiemon, head of the Osaka sake wholesaler Kajimaya.^*1 After marrying Nofu, heiress to the main Kajimaya house in Shinkawa, Tokyo, he took the name Kajima Seibei VIII. Beginning in 1885, he invited the Asakusa photographer Imazu Shojiro to his home to teach him photography. In 1888, he established the Tsukiji Dry Plate Manufacturing Company with Ogawa Kazumasa and William K. Burton. The following year, he joined the Photographic Society of Japan, and in 1893 he became vice president of the Greater Japan Photography Exhibition.^*7

The name "photographic magnate" arose from his lavish use of a wealthy merchant family's resources for expensive equipment, large-format photographs, the administration of photographic organizations, and experiments with new technologies. He should be understood as more than an extravagant hobbyist. At a time when photography in Japan still depended heavily on imports and individual expertise, he devoted his private wealth to developing it into a culture encompassing materials, organizations, exhibitions, publishing, and public demonstrations. A FUJIFILM exhibition likewise presents the Tsukiji Dry Plate Manufacturing Company, the Photographic Society of Japan, the Greater Japan Photography Exhibition, and the Genrokukan as a connected series of achievements.^*2

The relationship between the Kajima family fortune and his spending on photography should not be reduced to a simple causal account. Research by Wako University observes that although the main Kajima house had amassed immense wealth since the closing years of the Tokugawa shogunate, the liquor trade itself was changing during the Meiji period. The dissolution of merchant guilds, changes in sake transportation routes, the shift from barrels to bottles, and direct sales by Nada brewers had already begun to erode the family business.^*22 Seibei's extravagant lifestyle and massive investment in photography coincided with these developments. The evidence therefore supports an account in which changes in distribution structures and his personal spending and investments proceeded simultaneously, rather than one that attributes the wholesaler's decline to his expenditure on photography alone.

Dry Plates and Reproductive Technologies in the Meiji Period

The 1880s and 1890s, when Kajima invested heavily in photography, also saw changes in how photographs were made and circulated. Gelatin dry plates eliminated the wet-plate requirement that chemicals be applied at the shooting location and the plate developed before it dried. Photographers could instead carry factory-made light-sensitive plates and develop them later. A technical account by the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum explains that this change reduced the burden of carrying a portable darkroom and a full set of chemicals for outdoor work, allowing photographers to concentrate on making pictures.^*16

During the same period, Ogawa Kazumasa expanded beyond dry plates into photomechanical reproduction, printing, and publishing, transforming photography from a medium of single prints into one capable of mass reproduction. Research by the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum notes that Ogawa created the foundations that allowed photography to function in society through dry-plate production, printing, and publishing.^*17 Kajima's distinctive contribution went beyond financing this technological transition. Through the Tsukiji Dry Plate Manufacturing Company, the Genrokukan, exhibitions, and magazine frontispieces, he supported material production, photography, display, and reproduction as interconnected aspects of photographic culture.

The spread of dry plates also changed the social composition of those able to make photographs. Research on photographic history by the International Research Center for Japanese Studies explains that simpler techniques and lighter equipment increased the number of amateur photographers in the mid-Meiji period. Equipment remained expensive, however, and early users were largely drawn from affluent groups such as the aristocracy, senior officials, wealthy merchants, physicians, and university professors.^*21 Kajima was an extreme example of this early amateur class. By connecting his personal enthusiasm to organizations and systems of evaluation such as the Photographic Society of Japan and the Greater Japan Photography Exhibition, he also shows how an elite pastime contributed to the organization of photographic culture.

The Genrokukan's Facilities and Photographic Culture

Established in 1895 in Kobikicho, near present-day Ginza, the Genrokukan was a large photographic facility with an art gallery, a revolving stage, and powerful arc lamps. A contemporary advertisement at the end of Shashin Shinsho stated that the studio offered night photography and enlargements up to eight shaku square. By incorporating large-format photography, artificial lighting, and exhibition space into a facility whose functions extended beyond portraiture, the Genrokukan reveals that Seibei regarded photography as a means of presentation to an audience as well as a technique for making pictures.^*10

In the same year, he founded the Japan Magic Lantern Society with Toda Ujikyo and others. He conducted a public experiment in X-ray photography in 1896, followed in 1897 by outdoor night photography using magnesium flash at the funeral of Empress Dowager Eisho. His simultaneous engagement with photography, magic lanterns, X-rays, and artificial lighting as technologies for showing new kinds of images in public further clarifies the character of the Genrokukan.^*7

The Tsukiji Dry Plate Manufacturing Company and Domestic Dry Plates

In 1888, Seibei established the Tsukiji Dry Plate Manufacturing Company with Ogawa Kazumasa and William K. Burton. Japan then relied on imports for many photographic materials, including dry plates, and the attempt to manufacture them domestically was itself an effort to build an industrial foundation distinct from the photographer's craft. Seibei's role was less that of an inventor than that of a financial backer who made the experiments of engineers and photographers possible.^*7

The Photographic Society of Japan and the Greater Japan Photography Exhibition

He joined the Photographic Society of Japan in 1889 and served as vice president of the Greater Japan Photography Exhibition, founded in 1893. His provision of funding and organizational support for places where photographers could gather, compare their work, and have it evaluated—not simply make pictures—was important to the institutionalization of photography in Meiji Japan. Technical information and standards of judgment that were difficult for individual studios to accumulate could now be shared through organizations and exhibitions.^*2

The Photographic Society of Japan was formed in Tokyo in May 1889. Its membership included university professors, engineers, merchants, and foreign residents of Japan as well as professional photographers, and it helped disseminate photographic knowledge by introducing overseas techniques and presenting work. Art Platform Japan's record of the organization also confirms Kajima's participation.^*24 This cross-disciplinary membership shows photography moving beyond the specialized work of the studio and becoming a field of collaborative inquiry linking science, commerce, recreation, and art.

Dividing the Work with Ogawa Kazumasa—Photography, Reproduction, and Circulation

Although Kajima Seibei and Ogawa Kazumasa both participated in the Meiji photographic world, they played different roles. Ogawa worked as a photographer and developed techniques for printing images in quantity through his photomechanical printing business and publishing activities. Kajima joined Ogawa and Burton in experimenting with dry-plate production, invested in exhibitions and the Genrokukan, and created places where engineers, photographers, and audiences could meet. A landscape published in the magazine Taiyo in 1895 and credited both "Photographed by Genrokukan" and "Photographic engraving, plate-making, and printing by Ogawa Kazumasa" demonstrates how photography and reproduction were linked as distinct forms of expertise.^*14

X-Ray Photography and Night Photography

Seibei was also active in presenting new photographic technologies to the public. In 1896, he successfully conducted a public experiment in X-ray photography at the Greater Japan Photography Exhibition. The following year, he photographed the funeral of Empress Dowager Eisho outdoors at night using magnesium flash. FUJIFILM's chronology identifies the latter as Japan's first use of magnesium flash for outdoor night photography.^*7 Together with the Genrokukan's arc lamps, these activities show his effort to use artificial light to expand the times and places in which photography, previously dependent on natural light, could be undertaken.

The Genrokukan and Theatrical Photography

The Genrokukan was both a photographic studio that showcased the latest equipment and a place where kabuki and its actors were translated into photographic media. A Meiji University study of theatrical photography devotes a separate chapter to "Kajima Seibei and the Genrokukan" in its account of how theatrical photographs circulated to broad audiences through magazines, postcards, and photobooks from the late 1880s onward.^*8 By turning actors' appearances from singular events onstage into reproducible printed matter, the Genrokukan became more than a portrait studio: it was a production center linking theater and modern media.

Murashima Ayaka's study Omokage of the Stage: Theatrical Photography, Actors, and Photographers includes a chapter titled "Kajima Seibei and Kabuki Shinpo," examining Kajima within the modern visual culture that developed from actor prints through theatrical photography to print and publishing media.^*15 The Genrokukan's importance lies less in preserving the stage exactly as it appeared than in photographing actors and making their images reproducible beyond the theater through magazines and other publications. Theatrical photography connected the commercial work of the studio with modern entertainment media, which is one reason Kajima's activities cannot be explained simply as a wealthy man's fascination with technology.

The setting for theatrical photography also shifted during the Meiji period from the studio toward the theater. A research bulletin from the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, traces a progression from a time when kabuki actors visited studios such as the Genrokukan for costumed portraits to the establishment, as photographic techniques improved, of an outdoor shooting area with a hanging backdrop behind the Kabukiza dressing rooms. Photography thus moved closer to the space of performance.^*23 Kajima's theatrical work stands at the threshold between the early system that brought actors into the studio and the next phase, when photographic equipment moved toward the theater. Murashima Ayaka's decision to devote a chapter to Kajima and Kabuki Shinpo likewise reflects photography's role in circulating stage imagery to magazine readers, beyond merely preserving actors' likenesses.^*15

The Japan Magic Lantern Society and Projection Culture

The Japan Magic Lantern Society, which Seibei founded in 1895, shows his involvement in a culture that used light to project images for an audience as well as in the production of photographic prints. FUJIFILM's detailed chronology places the opening of the Genrokukan and the founding of the Society in the same year, followed by the public X-ray experiment in 1896.^*7 Viewed as a continuum, his work with studios, exhibitions, magic lanterns, and X-rays makes clear that his central concern was how new images could be produced and presented in public, beyond the skillful making of a single photograph.

Mount Fuji Photographs and Meiji Landscape Media

Kajima's photographs of Mount Fuji extend beyond the works presented to the Imperial family. In a JCII Photo Salon exhibition of photographs of Mount Fuji from the final years of the Tokugawa shogunate and the Meiji period, Kajima's View of Mount Fuji from Tagonoura appeared alongside works by Beato, Stillfried, and others. The exhibition situated it within the transition from an era in which foreign photographers shaped a touristic image of Japan to one in which Japanese photographers themselves incorporated Mount Fuji into modern photographic representation.^*13

Volume 1, no. 9 of Hakubunkan's Taiyo, published in 1895, also featured a landscape photograph as a frontispiece in its "Twelve Views of Japan" series, credited to "Genrokukan, photographer" and "Ogawa Kazumasa, photographic engraving, plate-making, and printing." The image made at the Genrokukan was transferred to mass magazine printing through Ogawa's photomechanical process. This example shows how Kajima's work reached beyond the studio to the formation of shared images of the Japanese landscape in modern publishing.^*14

Photographic Record of the Sino-Japanese War—War and Modern Media

The Tokyo Photographic Art Museum holds a substantial group of works attributed to Kajima under the title Photographic Record of the Sino-Japanese War, No. 1. In addition to harbor views such as View of the Japanese Settlement from the Busan Harbor Anchorage, the group includes laborers assembled before the Japanese consulate, the training of military horses, captured ships, fortifications, and camps.^*18 Its documentary value lies in recording logistics, personnel, ports, and military facilities as a series, instead of concentrating exclusively on dramatic moments of battle.

The Captured Ship Hanyang takes the seized vessel itself as its subject, while another plate records soldiers camped near Pyongyang.^*19 Seen alongside his photographs of Mount Fuji and actors, these images show that Kajima's production extended beyond aesthetic landscapes and commercial portraiture to encompass images of national events, war, and the records required by publishers.^*20 At a time when Meiji photography was expanding simultaneously into art, entertainment, news, and state documentation, Kajima supported these varied uses through the same network of facilities and financing.

Twenty-Four Views of Mount Fuji and the Imperial Family

Seibei produced Twenty-Four Views of Mount Fuji, photographing the mountain from multiple directions. An album dating from around 1895 is held by the Museum of the Imperial Collections, Sannomaru Shozokan. The Genrokukan name remains in the work's record, confirming that he fashioned his photographs of Mount Fuji into a cohesive series presenting a national symbol through modern photography, instead of treating them as a private travel record.^*4 Exhibition materials from the Sannomaru Shozokan list both Photograph of Snow-Capped Mount Fuji from 1894 and Twenty-Four Views of Mount Fuji from around 1895, confirming the presence of several Mount Fuji works by Kajima in the Imperial collection.^*12

The "Photographic Magnate" as a Patron of Photography

The name "photographic magnate" can overemphasize anecdotes of extravagance, but Seibei's funds were distributed across dry-plate production, photographic organizations, exhibitions, studios, publishing, and public presentations of new technologies. Works from the Sino-Japanese War period held by the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum also show that he photographed contemporary events in addition to Mount Fuji and portraits.^*11 The convergence of patron and photographer in one person makes Kajima significant to the formation of photographic institutions in Meiji Japan.

Kajima Seibei and Ogawa Kazumasa—Institutions, Technology, and Circulation

Kajima Seibei's place in photographic history becomes clearer when compared with that of Ogawa Kazumasa. Ogawa circulated photography through society as a reproducible print medium by means of photography, photomechanical reproduction, and publishing. Kajima funded dry-plate production and supported photographic organizations, exhibitions, the Genrokukan, magic lanterns, and artificial lighting, taking responsibility for the institutional structures that sustained production and public presentation. Research on Ogawa by the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum shows that dry-plate manufacture, printing, and publishing were essential conditions in transforming photography into a social medium.^*17 Kajima's significance lies in investing his private wealth in several mechanisms that linked photographers, engineers, funding, facilities, and audiences, rather than consolidating these conditions in a single enterprise.

Later Years after Leaving the Kajima Family

After investing large sums in expensive equipment, large-format photographs, dry-plate production, photographic organizations, and the Genrokukan, Seibei left the Kajima family and closed the Genrokukan in 1897. Research examining contemporary sources notes both the studio's extensive equipment and services as described in its advertisements and the circumstances of his departure from his adoptive family that year.^*10 No confirmed evidence establishes his spending on photography as the sole cause of the sake wholesaler's decline. It is therefore more appropriate to distinguish his large-scale investment of family resources in photography from his departure than to reduce the story to the claim that photography ruined the family business.

After leaving the family, he bought Ponta out of her geisha contract and opened a photography studio in Kyoto, but the business did not succeed. He later opened the Harukikan studio across from the Hongoza theater in Tokyo. After losing his right thumb in a magnesium explosion, he closed the studio and subsequently became a flutist of the Morita school of Noh under the name Miki Kisaragi. Art Platform Japan records his death on August 6, 1924.^*9 His later years allow the "photographic magnate" to be understood through both the splendor of his privately financed support for photographic institutions and the personal history that made it impossible for him to sustain those activities.

Surviving Works and Current Reassessment

Treating Kajima solely as an institutional supporter obscures his own photographic activity. The Tokyo Photographic Art Museum holds his Taedong Gate and the Walls of Pyongyang, made during the Sino-Japanese War in 1894–95, confirming that contemporary wartime landscapes joined Mount Fuji, portraiture, and theater among his subjects.^*11 Considered together with Twenty-Four Views of Mount Fuji at the Museum of the Imperial Collections, Sannomaru Shozokan, the Genrokukan's activities encompassed a mode of production that circulated photographs of landscapes, public events, and theater, in addition to investment in the photographic industry.

Recent research and exhibitions have also moved Kajima beyond the anecdotal image of a man who spent his fortune on a hobby and returned him to the history of photography's institutional formation. In a lecture at the SieboldHuis, Sebastian Dobson discussed Kajima within the international setting of Meiji photography.^*3 A program at the Maison de la culture du Japon à Paris also presented Kajima as a figure through whom to consider Japanese photography after Yokohama shashin.^*5 The 2019 exhibition at FUJIFILM SQUARE offered a comprehensive account of the "photographic magnate's" life and achievements, and an exhibition record also remains on Tokyo Art Beat.^*6 This reassessment corresponds to a broader approach that considers not only individual photographers' masterpieces but also those who supported materials, facilities, exhibitions, and publishing as subjects of photographic history.