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When Japan opened its ports to the West in the 1850s, photography—called shashin, literally, a copy of truth — soon became widely available. High-end professional salons and open-air studios operated by itinerant practitioners offered portraits at every price range. While the popularity of ambrotypes, a positive photograph on glass, was short-lived in the United States, Japanese ambrotypes were in demand from the early 1870s until the end of the nineteenth century. This ambrotype portrait depicts a dreamy-eyed, fourteen-year-old student. Housed in poetry-inscribed kiri-wood box, it provides an intimate and rare glimpse of how modern Japanese society represented itself.</div>
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<a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Creator:Fujita&amp;action=edit&amp;redlink=1" class="new" title="Creator:Fujita (page does not exist)">Creator:Fujita</a></div>
1886<div style="display: none;">date QS:P571,+1886-00-00T00:00:00Z/9</div>
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