大阪南地 富田屋小三

About this photo

In a kimono with a lattice-like pattern, she twists around to look back. A large, round topknot (mage) is piled on her head, and several bamboo poles stand nearby. The name under the photo reads "Osaka Nanchi, Tomitaya Kosan."

Kyoto Osaka Imayo Bijin Fuzoku (Beauties of Today in Kyoto and Osaka), the album with this photo, came out in 1903 (Meiji 36). Eighteen years earlier, traditional Japanese hairstyles had come under pressure to change. In 1885, the doctor Watanabe Kanae and others called them "inconvenient, unclean and uneconomical" and promoted sokuhatsu, a Western-style way of putting up the hair. Because it did not need much oil and women could easily do it themselves, sokuhatsu quickly caught on, and by the middle of the Meiji era (the 1890s) bread shaped like sokuhatsu hairstyles was even being sold. Amid all this, the woman in this photo wears her hair in the traditional Japanese style. The reading of the name is our best guess.

Glossary