We've just looked at Nakane Sekkō's portrait from the 1860s.
Notice the writing in Japanese which is inscribed directly on his own portrait.
And then the Chinese-style quatrain here which he
took the time out to write on a piece of paper and to preserve,
make sure that he's preserving with the photo graph itself.
So sort of summary, again, of his life at the age 60, are of very,
very importance sort of milestone in the life of a Japanese samurai at this time.
We see a lot of photographs appearing from maybe 1864,
1865 through the last couple of years in the Edo period.
Here's one, again, a samurai sitting in a Western-style
chair but looking like a samurai with his Japanese clothes on and
his hair prepared in the traditional style.
There's nothing written on the obverse of the photograph.
There's just him sitting there with some space on top of him.
There are hundreds and hundreds of photographs like this,
obviously not just in Japan but all over the world at this time.
What we need to do, though, to make sure
that there's really nothing written on it though, it to turn the photograph over.
This is something that I've been doing for more than ten years now,
whenever I travel to the provinces or go to an old book store or
to a museum that has old Japanese photographs.
I immediately ask the proprietor or the owner to turn over the photograph,
so that I can see the back of it.
And often what we find is, writing, like this very,
very beautiful calligraphy, by the way.
Again, a Chinese-style quatrain by this samurai whose name is Ichikawa.
Nakane Sekkō at 60 had his portrait done,
and wrote his reflections on it to commemorate that birthday.
This man here, we know from the writing, has just turned 40.
Which is, again, 40, 50, 60, these are important birthdays,
and he writes about his willingness and eagerness to study.
Again, he reflects on the fact that he hasn't gotten as far as he wants to.
But he declares his commitment to improving himself and
to being a constructive, productive man in society at the time.
It's dated here 1862 and he also gives us his sign.
His signature says that this is a photograph of myself, he writes on
the back of his own photograph, which is an interesting act in itself, I believe.
We go on and move away from photographs to look at people's diaries,
their travelogues, all kinds of documents from the late
1860s into the Meiji period which begins in 1868.
Many of the samurai nobility sent their children, young men and
young women as well, to study abroad in the years right after the Meiji Restoration
to the United States, colleges there, or perhaps in England, in Scotland, Prussia.
Some even went to Italy, often many young men and women studied in France.
And we have a lot of bureaucrats in the new government as well,
traveling throughout the United States and Europe to discover, and explore, and
record, at first hand modern Western society.
Right about this time, for example,
in 1871 there was a large world agricultural exhibition going on.
There are different world exhibitions going on in different places in Europe and
the United States.
This is something throughout the 19th century, and into the early 20th century,
that Japanese young intellectuals, and bureaucrats, and industrialists would use,
take the opportunity, they would go to these world exhibitions.
So that they could learn about and record, often purchase
items which were right on line, were just coming onto line or
coming on line as new innovations in the Western world.
And what I've put up here is a short sort of excerpt that
I've translated from the travel log diary of a young
bureaucrat and poet as well whose name is Hosokawa Junjirō.
Who traveled to San Francisco in 1871 as part of his work to
attend the exhibition there.
He also moved from there.
After being in San Francisco, he took the railroad which had just joined
the east and the west of the United States in 1869, travelled to Chicago.
And was in Chicago during the Great Fire, the Great Chicago Fire there and
left a very, very detailed first-hand document in classical Chinese
of the mayhem and the destruction of the great city of Chicago in that year.
But anyway, before that, he's in San Francisco and he's walking around,
he's preparing, he's just arrived.
And on the 22nd day of the 6th month,
we're still in the lunar calendar so I don't want to say June.