{"title":"Pre-war China Photography","description":"Photographic records, gravure plate books and illustrated surveys documenting China and East Asia before the war — each carefully preserved in Japan and offered in confirmed original condition with provenance notes where known.","products":[{"product_id":"sino-japanese-war-photographic-album-naval-volume-kazumasa-ogawa-1895-96-meiji-collotype-folio","title":"Sino-Japanese War Photographic Album (Naval Volume) - Kazumasa Ogawa, 1895-96 Meiji Collotype Folio","description":"\u003cdiv style=\"font-family:Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;line-height:1.7;color:#2b2b2b;max-width:760px;\"\u003e\n  \u003ch2 style=\"font-variant:small-caps;letter-spacing:.5px;border-bottom:1px solid #c8b89a;padding-bottom:8px;\"\u003eSino-Japanese War Photographic Album — Naval Volume\u003c\/h2\u003e\n  \u003cp style=\"font-style:italic;color:#5a5a5a;\"\u003eA monumental large-format collotype album recording the naval theatre of the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95), produced by Kazumasa Ogawa, the pioneering Meiji photographer and master of the collotype process in Japan.\u003c\/p\u003e\n  \u003ch3 style=\"font-variant:small-caps;color:#6b4f2a;\"\u003eHistorical Context\u003c\/h3\u003e\n  \u003cp\u003eThe First Sino-Japanese War marked the emergence of Imperial Japan as a modern naval power and reshaped the balance of East Asia at the close of the nineteenth century. This album was issued at the very moment those events entered public memory, presenting the fleets, officers, vessels and coastal operations of the conflict to a contemporary audience. Kazumasa Ogawa (1860-1929) was among the most accomplished photographers of the Meiji era, renowned for introducing and perfecting the collotype in Japan; works bearing his imprint are prized today for their tonal depth and archival permanence.\u003c\/p\u003e\n  \u003ch3 style=\"font-variant:small-caps;color:#6b4f2a;\"\u003eThe Volume\u003c\/h3\u003e\n  \u003cp\u003eIssued in the 28th-29th years of Meiji (1895-96), this is the Naval Volume of the war record. It comprises plate sequences of 129, 135, 67 and 24 pages, presented in an imposing folio format measuring approximately 31 x 44.5 cm — a scale that allows the collotype plates to be appreciated in full detail. As a primary visual document of late-nineteenth-century East Asian naval history, it belongs to a class of material now seldom encountered intact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n  \u003ch3 style=\"font-variant:small-caps;color:#6b4f2a;\"\u003eCondition\u003c\/h3\u003e\n  \u003cp\u003eOffered honestly as a period object more than a century old. Minor wear and light toning are present throughout, with some foxing consistent with age. There is some tearing in part. Overall a substantial and historically important folio presenting very well for its era; please review all images, which form part of the description.\u003c\/p\u003e\n  \u003cp style=\"font-size:.85em;color:#8a7a5c;border-top:1px solid #e3d8c2;padding-top:10px;\"\u003eFrom a curated holding of East Asian historical photographic material, offered by an antiquarian dealer specialising in rare Japanese and East Asian books and documents.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"KT Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52455183417625,"sku":"N0000004257","price":1744300.0,"currency_code":"JPY","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1000\/2264\/9113\/files\/398354707_large_99c91858-0f1d-4936-bcc2-93733d2d6a0b.jpg?v=1780292584"},{"product_id":"the-north-china-incident-photographic-album-boxer-rebellion-s-yamamoto-peking-1901","title":"The North China Incident Photographic Album (Boxer Rebellion) - S. Yamamoto, Peking 1901","description":"\u003cdiv style=\"font-family:Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif;line-height:1.7;color:#2b2b2b;max-width:760px;\"\u003e\n  \u003ch2 style=\"font-variant:small-caps;letter-spacing:.5px;border-bottom:1px solid #c8b89a;padding-bottom:8px;\"\u003eThe North China Incident — A Photographic Album of the Boxer Rebellion\u003c\/h2\u003e\n  \u003cp style=\"font-style:italic;color:#5a5a5a;\"\u003eA rare photographic album of the Boxer Uprising and its immediate aftermath in Peking and North China, compiled by Sanshichiro Yamamoto and published in 1901 — a primary eyewitness record from the close of the Qing dynasty.\u003c\/p\u003e\n  \u003ch3 style=\"font-variant:small-caps;color:#6b4f2a;\"\u003eHistorical Context\u003c\/h3\u003e\n  \u003cp\u003eThe Boxer Rebellion of 1900-01 (the Boxer Uprising \/ Yihetuan Movement) was one of the defining upheavals of late imperial China, culminating in the siege of the foreign legations in Peking and an international intervention that left a lasting imprint on the dying years of the Qing dynasty. Photographs taken in the immediate wake of these events are scarce and historically significant, capturing the streets, architecture and atmosphere of the capital at a pivotal moment.\u003c\/p\u003e\n  \u003ch3 style=\"font-variant:small-caps;color:#6b4f2a;\"\u003eThe Photographer\u003c\/h3\u003e\n  \u003cp\u003eSanshichiro Yamamoto (also recorded as Seiyo Yamamoto) maintained a photographic studio on Wangfujing in Peking, from which he documented the late-Qing capital. Published in 1901 by the Tokyo Printing Co. Ltd. for S. Yamamoto, this album stands as a contemporary visual testimony to North China in the year following the Boxer crisis.\u003c\/p\u003e\n  \u003ch3 style=\"font-variant:small-caps;color:#6b4f2a;\"\u003eCondition\u003c\/h3\u003e\n  \u003cp\u003eA period photographic album of considerable age. Toning and handling consistent with its date are to be expected, as is normal for albums of this period. Please review all photographs carefully, which form an integral part of this description, and assess condition for yourself before purchase.\u003c\/p\u003e\n  \u003cp style=\"font-size:.85em;color:#8a7a5c;border-top:1px solid #e3d8c2;padding-top:10px;\"\u003eFrom a curated holding of East Asian historical photographic material, offered by an antiquarian dealer specialising in rare Japanese and East Asian books and documents.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"KT Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52455183712537,"sku":"N0000003629","price":476300.0,"currency_code":"JPY","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1000\/2264\/9113\/files\/02130003_698debde47982.png?v=1780292589"},{"product_id":"border-defense-commemorative-photographic-album-the-great-wall-the-asia-express-and-hsinking-1937-142-plates","title":"Border Defense Commemorative Photographic Album: The Great Wall, the Asia Express, and Hsinking, 1937 (142 Plates)","description":"\u003ch2\u003eBorder Defense Commemorative Photographic Album — The Great Wall, the Asia Express, and Hsinking, 1937\u003c\/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eA rich commemorative photographic album of 1937 gathering 142 plates that range across some of the most evocative subjects of 1930s Northeast Asia: the ramparts of the Great Wall of China, the celebrated Asia Express of the South Manchuria Railway, and the planned capital city of Hsinking, among other scenes. Compiled by Oka Tatsuzo, the album was assembled as a personal and institutional record of the border defense period.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWith its substantial sequence of original photographs, the volume functions as a wide-ranging visual chronicle of the region — military, infrastructural, and urban — at a single charged moment in its history. The presence of the streamlined Asia Express, the era's most famous express train, alongside views of the Great Wall and the new capital, makes the album an unusually vivid survey of place and period.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA substantial primary source for collectors of prewar East Asian photography, railway history, and the visual record of the Manchurian frontier.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eOffered by KT Vintage, drawing on decades of trusted international sales to discerning collectors and institutions across Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Oceania.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"KT Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52455361315097,"sku":"N0000002466","price":238600.0,"currency_code":"JPY","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1000\/2264\/9113\/files\/149170778_large_a1fcba86-0474-47c9-a48e-62306ba1d1f2.jpg?v=1780292606"},{"product_id":"lushun-institute-of-technology-graduation-commemorative-photographic-album-1925","title":"Lushun Institute of Technology: Graduation Commemorative Photographic Album, 1925","description":"\u003ch2\u003eLushun Institute of Technology — Graduation Commemorative Photographic Album, December 1925\u003c\/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eA finely produced graduation commemorative album from the Lushun (Ryojun) Institute of Technology, issued in December 1925. Beyond its formal portraits, the album is unusually rich in working views: numerous on-site photographs of the departments of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and mining and metallurgy, capturing laboratories, workshops, and field practice as they actually were.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe volume also preserves sweeping panoramas of the Institute, of the city of Lushun, and of celebrated sights across Manchuria, making it both a record of one of the region's premier technical colleges and a wider visual survey of the period. For historians of engineering education, of the South Manchuria region, and of 1920s institutional photography, it is a documentary source of real depth.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAn evocative and substantial album from the Taisho era, of clear appeal to collectors of East Asian historical and photographic materials.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eOffered by KT Vintage, drawing on decades of trusted international sales to discerning collectors and institutions across Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Oceania.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"KT Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52455362527513,"sku":"N0000007983","price":171700.0,"currency_code":"JPY","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1000\/2264\/9113\/files\/20240624181241265297_3cff05c59d22b579b25147d4fadf057e.jpg?v=1780292613"},{"product_id":"manchuria-photographic-yearbook-1930-south-manchuria-railway-presidents-office-information-department","title":"Manchuria Photographic Yearbook: 1930, South Manchuria Railway, President's Office Information Department","description":"\u003ch2\u003eManchuria Photographic Yearbook — 1930\u003c\/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eA distinguished photographic yearbook of 1930, compiled and edited by the Information Department of the President's Office of the South Manchuria Railway. The volume gathers a curated selection of artistic photographs of the region by named photographers of the day — figures of village and city, station mornings, dust-laden plains, temple scenes, working people, and the changing light of the Manchurian landscape — each plate credited and accompanied by the photographers' own reflections and a closing critique.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMore than a record, the yearbook is a considered survey of the pictorialist photographic culture that flourished around the South Manchuria Railway, presenting the region as both a place of work and a subject of art. Produced as an institutional annual, it was issued in limited quantity, and copies are now uncommon. For students of prewar East Asian photography, of the South Manchuria Railway, and of the visual self-image of 1930s Manchuria, it is a primary source of unusual richness.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAn elegant and substantial volume, of clear appeal to collectors of prewar East Asian photography and historical materials.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eOffered by KT Vintage, drawing on decades of trusted international sales to discerning collectors and institutions across Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Oceania.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"KT Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52455379829017,"sku":"N0000004641","price":120600.0,"currency_code":"JPY","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1000\/2264\/9113\/files\/20240708163211031337_248d510a4305e33d0680be1dc5c70cbd.jpg?v=1780292639"},{"product_id":"photograph-album-of-a-pre-war-railwayman-approximately-250-mounted-photographs-japan-and-manchuria-c-1935","title":"Photograph Album of a Pre-War Railwayman: Approximately 250 Mounted Photographs, Japan and Manchuria, c. 1935","description":"\u003ch2\u003ePhotograph Album of a Pre-War Railwayman — Approximately 250 Mounted Photographs, c. 1935\u003c\/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eA moving personal photograph album assembled by a pre-war railway employee, holding approximately two hundred and fifty mounted photographs that appear to span service at Higashine Station in Yamagata Prefecture and a later posting at Boketu Station in Manchuria. Among the images are two views taken before Boketu Station, four showing Manchurian steam locomotives, and many more recording the daily life of the railwayman, his family, and his associates across both the Japanese and Manchurian chapters of his working life.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eVernacular albums of this kind — private, first-hand, and unrepeatable — are among the most valuable of primary sources, preserving the lived texture of a frontier railway career in a way no official record can. The presence of original period photographs, from station platforms to family scenes, carries the immediacy of the time directly to the viewer. For historians of the South Manchuria sphere, of railway labour, and of prewar East Asian photography, it is a documentary treasure.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA genuine and affecting album of the period, of clear appeal to collectors of prewar East Asian photography and Northeast Asian historical materials.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eOffered by KT Vintage, drawing on decades of trusted international sales to discerning collectors and institutions across Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Oceania.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"KT Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52455396442393,"sku":"N0000011239","price":89300.0,"currency_code":"JPY","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1000\/2264\/9113\/files\/20250416133314851843_5431422b47b8708ee8c96e28ee90fe6c.jpg?v=1780292679"},{"product_id":"geography-and-customs-world-photograph-album-sixth-edition-with-chinese-translation-by-zhang-chuntao-1917","title":"Geography and Customs: World Photograph Album, Sixth Edition, with Chinese Translation by Zhang Chuntao, 1917","description":"\u003ch2\u003eGeography and Customs: World Photograph Album — Sixth Edition, 1917\u003c\/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eA photographic survey of the world's geography and customs, the sixth edition, edited by Antaro Shoda with a Chinese translation by Zhang Chuntao, published in May 1917. The volume gathers a wide array of photographs of lands and peoples across the globe, each presented with bilingual text so that the work could be read in both Japanese and Chinese — a deliberate instrument of international understanding and cross-cultural exchange in its day.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe presence of a parallel Chinese translation is what distinguishes this album. Produced in the late Taisho years, it reflects a moment of active intellectual traffic across East Asia, when a single illustrated geography could be addressed at once to Japanese and Chinese readers. As such it carries value not only as a pictorial record of the world's regions and peoples but as a document of the period's ethnography, geography, and the shared print culture that linked the two reading publics.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA specific and uncommon survival, of clear interest to historians of geography and ethnography, of early twentieth-century photography, and of Sino-Japanese cultural exchange — a genuine artefact for a serious collection of pre-war Chinese photography and East Asian historical materials.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eOffered by KT Vintage, drawing on decades of trusted international sales to discerning collectors and institutions across Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Oceania.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"KT Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52455469973785,"sku":"N0000013659","price":71900.0,"currency_code":"JPY","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1000\/2264\/9113\/files\/20220517200630021756_d4a4c2931ad5605c2e73450b1b754447.jpg?v=1780292700"},{"product_id":"harbin-and-its-customs-an-on-site-photographic-collection-by-fujii-kinjiro-1943","title":"Harbin and Its Customs: An On-Site Photographic Collection by Fujii Kinjiro, 1943","description":"\u003ch2\u003eHarbin and Its Customs: An On-Site Photographic Collection — 1943\u003c\/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eAn on-site photographic collection of Harbin and its customs, taken by Fujii Kinjiro and published in 1943. Compiled from photographs made in the city itself, the work assembles a contemporary visual record of Harbin's streets, manners, and daily life in the closing years of the Manchukuo era — a primary pictorial document of the city as it was actually seen and recorded on the ground.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis is the first edition. As a first-hand photographic survey, the collection preserves the appearance and texture of wartime Harbin at a defined and late moment in its history, of clear value to historians of the city, of pre-war and wartime photography, and of the social life of the Northeast. On-site photographic collections of this kind, made and issued in the final years of the period, are uncommon survivals.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA genuine and evocative photographic record, well suited to a serious collection of pre-war China photography and East Asian historical materials.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eOffered by KT Vintage, drawing on decades of trusted international sales to discerning collectors and institutions across Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Oceania.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"KT Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52455491567897,"sku":"N0000017563","price":29500.0,"currency_code":"JPY","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1000\/2264\/9113\/files\/20210708210511779389_8431459a719be792411d8643b999f616.jpg?v=1780292753"}],"url":"https:\/\/kujira-vintage.myshopify.com\/collections\/prewar-china-photography.oembed","provider":"KT Japan Curio","version":"1.0","type":"link"}