Yokoyama Matsusaburo

Yokoyama Matsusaburo was born in 1838 on Etorofu Island in the Kuril archipelago (present-day Russian territory), into a merchant family. After his father's death in 1848, his family relocated to Hakodate. In 1854 he witnessed daguerreotypes made in Hakodate by American Eliphalet Brown Jr. (attached to Commodore Perry's fleet) and Russian A.F. Mozhaiskii — his first encounter with photography. He subsequently studied Western painting under the German painter Lehmann at the Russian Consulate in Hakodate, and photography under Russian Consul I.A. Goshkevich^*1. Around 1864 he traveled to Shanghai to find a photography teacher, was redirected to Yokohama, and ultimately gained entry as a student under the pioneering photographer Shimooka Renjo. In 1868 he opened his Tsuten-ro studio in the Ikenohata district of Ueno, Tokyo — contemporaries described it as 'the most modern and well-equipped studio in Japan.' That year he was commissioned by Meiji government official Ninagawa Noritane to photograph Edo Castle before its reconstruction; the project was published in 1872 as an album of 64 photographs, now an Important Cultural Property at the Tokyo National Museum^*2. In 1872 he accompanied Japan's first systematic cultural property survey — the Jinshin Kensa — for 122 days, photographing Todai-ji's Great Buddha Hall, the Shosoin repository, and Horyu-ji's Five-Story Pagoda. The 386 stereoviews, 109 large-format albumen prints, and 70 glass negatives produced are Important Cultural Properties at the Tokyo National Museum^*3. From 1876 he taught photography and photolithography at the Japan Military Academy under French instructor Abel Guérineau, mastering carbon printing and other advanced European processes. In 1881 he founded Japan's first dedicated photolithographic printing enterprise, Shashin Sekiban-sha, in Ginza. He also developed shashin abura-e ('photographic oil paintings'), a hybrid technique fusing photographic emulsion with oil pigment. He died in Tokyo in October 1884 at the age of 46. In June 2023, the Agency for Cultural Affairs designated a major collection of his related materials as an Important Cultural Property^*4.