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 ...

artist and pioneering photographer. Originally from Kiryū, in what is now

Gunma Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Gunma Prefecture has a population of 1,937,626 (1 October 2019) and has a geographic area of 6,362 km2 (2,456 sq mi). Gunma Prefecture borders Niigata Prefecture and Fukushima ...

, she studied at an art school in

Edo Edo ( ja, , , "bay-entrance" or "estuary"), also romanized as Jedo, Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of Tokyo. Edo, formerly a ''jōkamachi'' (castle town) centered on Edo Castle located in Musashi Province, became the ''de facto'' capital of ...

(now

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 ...

) where she met

Shima Kakoku was a pioneering Japanese photographer and artist. He was born in modern-day Tochigi Prefecture. Possibly inspired by his father, who was an avid painter, in 1847 he entered an art school in Edo (now Tokyo) where he met Ryū (surname unknown; ...

(1827–1870), a fellow student. The two married in 1855 and soon began moving about the

Kantō region The is a geographical area of Honshu, the largest island of Japan. In a common definition, the region includes the Greater Tokyo Area and encompasses seven prefectures: Gunma, Tochigi, Ibaraki, Saitama, Tokyo, Chiba and Kanagawa. Slight ...

, possibly exhibiting their works along the way. At some point the couple learned photography, and in the spring of 1864 Ryū photographed her husband, thereby creating the earliest known photograph by a Japanese woman. The negative is on deposit at the Tojo Historical Museum, a wet-plate print of this portrait remains in the Shima family archives and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston has an albumen print. The Shimas operated a

photographic studio A photographic studio is often a business owned and represented by one or more photographers, possibly accompanied by assistants and pupils, who create and sell their own and sometimes others’ photographs. Since the early years of the 20th ce ...

in Edo''Nihon no shashinka'' specifies

Shitaya is the name of a neighborhood in Taito, Tokyo, and a former ward (下谷区 ''Shitaya-ku'') in the now-defunct Tokyo City. The former ward encompassed 15 neighborhoods in the western half of the modern Taito ward, including Ueno, Yanaka and Akih ...

. in about 1865 to 1867, until Kakoku accepted a teaching position at Kaiseijo. Following her husband's death in 1870, Ryū returned to Kiryū where she opened her own studio. She died in 1900.

References

1823 births 1900 deaths Pioneers of photography Portrait photographers People of Meiji-period Japan People from Gunma Prefecture Japanese photographers Japanese women photographers 19th-century women photographers {{Japan-photographer-stub