京都祇園 古川丸子

About this photo

This photo is from Kyoto Osaka Imayo Bijin Fuzoku (Beauties of Today in Kyoto and Osaka), a photo album published in 1903 (Meiji 36). She sits in a kimono with a fine checked pattern and a dark obi, twisting slightly and holding something like a thin stick between her fingertips near her hair. The name under the photo reads "Kyoto Gion, Furukawa Maruko." Imayo, in the album's title, means "of today."

The album was made by the photographer Ogawa Kazumasa. Born in 1860 in what is now Gyoda, Saitama Prefecture, he went to Boston in the United States in 1882 to learn photography, and after coming home he opened a photo studio, Gyokujunkan, in Iidamachi, Tokyo. In 1889 he set up Japan's first collotype printing works (a method that prints the tones of a photograph just as they are), and in 1891 he also took the photos for Tokyo Hyaku Bijin (One Hundred Beauties of Tokyo), an event at the Ryounkaku tower in Asakusa.

Glossary