, also known as Ogawa Kazuma or Ogawa Isshin, was a

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

photographer A photographer (the Greek language, Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who makes photographs. Duties and types of photographe ...

, printer and publisher who was a pioneer in photomechanical printing and photography in the

Meiji era The is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization b ...

Life

Ogawa was born in Saitama to the

Matsudaira The was a Japanese samurai clan that descended from the Minamoto clan. It originated in and took its name from Matsudaira village, in Mikawa Province (modern-day Aichi Prefecture). During the Sengoku period, the chieftain of the main line of th ...

samurai were the hereditary military nobility and officer caste of medieval and early-modern Japan from the late 12th century until their abolition in 1876. They were the well-paid retainers of the '' daimyo'' (the great feudal landholders). They h ...

clan. He started studying

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

and

photography Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employed ...

at the age of 15 under Yoshiwara Hideo, then in 1880 he moved to

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

in order to further hone his English language skills. One year later, Ogawa was hired as an interpreter in the

Yokohama is the second-largest city in Japan by population and the most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city and the most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a 2020 population of 3.8 million. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of To ...

Police Department, while learning photography from

Shimooka Renjō was a Japanese photographer''328 Outstanding Japanese Photographers'' / ''Nihon shashinka jiten'' (). Kyoto: Tankōsha, 2000. . Despite the alternative title in English, this book is in Japanese only. and was one of the first professional photo ...

in Yokohama. In 1882, he moved to

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

where he took courses in

portrait photography Portrait photography, or portraiture, is a type of photography aimed toward capturing the personality of a person or group of people by using effective Photographic lighting, lighting, Painted photography backdrops, backdrops, and poses. A portr ...

and the dry plate process. He also studied

collotype Collotype is a gelatin-based photographic printing process invented by Alphonse Poitevin in 1855 to print images in a wide variety of tones without the need for halftone screens. The majority of collotypes were produced between the 1870s and ...

printing in

Albert Type Company Albert may refer to: Companies * Albert (supermarket), a supermarket chain in the Czech Republic * Albert Heijn, a supermarket chain in the Netherlands * Albert Market, a street market in The Gambia * Albert Productions, a record label * Albert ...

. Upon his return to Japan in 1884, Ogawa opened a photographic studio in

Iidabashi is a district of Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. It was in the former ward of Kōjimachi, which existed in Tokyo until 1947. Etymology Iidabashi is named after a nearby bridge called Iida Bridge (, ''Iidabashi''), itself named after an Edo-period fa ...

(

Kōjimachi is a district in Chiyoda, Tokyo. History Prior to the arrival of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the area was known as . The area developed as townspeople settled along the Kōshū Kaidō. In 1878, the Kōjimachi area became , a ward of the city of Tokyo. I ...

), the first in Tokyo. Four years later, he established the Tsukiji Kampan Seizō Kaisha ( Tsukiji

dry plate Dry plate, also known as gelatin process, is an improved type of photographic plate. It was invented by Dr. Richard L. Maddox in 1871 and had become so widely adopted by 1879 that the first dry plate factory had been established. With much of ...

manufacturing company), which manufactured dry plates for use by photographers. In 1889, he set up Japan's first collotype business, the Ogawa Shashin Seihan jo (), also referred to as the K. Ogawa printing factory. In the same year, Ogawa worked as an editor for '' Shashin Shinpō'' (, lit. Photography journal), the only photographic journal available at the time, as well as for ''

Kokka (''lit.'' 'Flower of the Nation') is a periodical of East Asian art, first issued in October 1889. ''Kokka'' was established by Okakura Tenshin, journalist , and a patron of the arts who sought to challenge the primacy of Western art in Meiji ...

'' magazine (, lit. National flower). He printed both magazines using the

printing process. Ogawa was a founding member of the Japan Photographic Society, which gathered photography amateurs from all around Japan. In 1891, he was charged with taking 100 pictures of Tokyo's most attractive

geisha {{Culture of Japan, Traditions, Geisha {{nihongo, Geisha, 芸者 ({{IPAc-en, ˈ, ɡ, eɪ, ʃ, ə; {{IPA-ja, ɡeːɕa, lang), also known as {{nihongo, , 芸子, geiko (in Kyoto and Kanazawa) or {{nihongo, , 芸妓, geigi, are a class of female ...

, to commemorate the opening of the

Ryōunkaku The was Japan's first Western-style skyscraper. It stood in the Asakusa district of City of Tokyo (now Taitō, Tokyo) from 1890 until its demolition following the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923. The , as it was affectionately called by Tokyoite ...

.Celebrated Geysha (Geisha) of Tokyo
Kazumasa Ogawa, 1892, Retrieved 10 November 2016 In 1894 he met the writer

Alicia Little Alicia Little or Mrs Archibald Little (1845 – 31 July 1926) was a British writer and a campaigner for women's rights and later against foot binding in China. Life Little was born as Alicia Ellen Neve BewickeIn many of her books ''Neve'' appear ...

who was visiting Japan from her home in China. She was already a published author and she had a diary that she had written. Ogawa supplied photographs and it was published as ''My Diary in a Chinese Farm''. The book described their stay on a farm near the Yangtse River as they avoided the summer heat at their home in Chingqing.

Notes

External links

A biographical timeline of Ogawa KazumasaA selection of pictures taken by OgawaFlower collotypes by Ogawa
*Bachmann Eckenstein Art & Antiques,

(''Asia through the Lens''). Accessed 20 January 2007.
QUT Digital Collections
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ogawa, Kazumasa 1860 births 1929 deaths Japanese photographers Imperial household artists