Kusakabe Kimbei was a purveyor of early Japanese souvenir photography, a genre often called Yokohama photography due to the key role that city played as a destination for Western travelers. There have been a number of articles and books on the subject published in the last decade, primarily addressing the Western photographers who dominated this market in the 1860s and 1870s, such as Felice Beato and Baron Raimund von Stillfried. However, by the late 1880s, Japanese photographers became the principal producers of souvenir photography, with Kimbei one of the most successful. Mio Wakita’s Staging Desires: Japanese Femininity in Kusakabe Kimbei’s Nineteenth-Century Souvenir Photography adds to the growing body of literature in this subfield as the first English-language monograph on a Japanese native photographer working in the genre. Her goal is to go beyond the idea that these images were influenced primarily by the Western consumer-driven market in order to “interrogate how the Japanese creator of the image encoded th[e] photographic text” (10).

Despite the challenges inherent in confirming attribution of nineteenth-century souvenir photos, Wakita’s diligent archival research has yielded a series of images from albums stamped with the Kimbei Studio label that can be attributed with reasonable certainty. As all of these were issued under Kimbei’s management of the business, even if he himself was not the photographer, Wakita identifies them as embodying “the ‘Kimbei’ brand” (21). This was marked by a sophisticated compositional aesthetic and an exceptional level of quality in the delicate hand coloring that is a hallmark of this school of photography. Like his peers, Kimbei produced a broad range of imagery, including landscape views and so-called costume photographs (genre scenes of daily life, occupations, and native customs). Costumes comprised about four hundred of the approximately thirteen hundred images Wakita has identified from the Kimbei Studio. A majority of these depict women, and it is this sub-category Wakita chooses as her focus.

Women were prominent subjects from the time souvenir photography first developed in the 1860s. In photographs as well as the contemporary literary culture epitomized by works such as Madame Butterfly, the idea of the musume, or young submissive Japanese female, was particularly appealing to the late nineteenth-century Western audience. Wakita summarizes this model as a typically Orientalist “West-aggressor-male” vs. “Japan-victim-female” binary (11). However, she argues that this conventional understanding becomes problematic when considering images from the 1880s on; as Japanese photographers took over the industry, the meanings embedded in their images of women changed. A key element of this change was a shift in the identities of the models depicted: whereas the female models appearing in the first generation of souvenir images were lower class, many of the models appearing in Kimbei’s photos were geisha, the local celebrities of their day. The hegemonic nature of the relationship between photographer and model consequently shifted as well. Given these changes, Wakita questions the degree to which Japanese souvenir photography by native practitioners was complicit in depicting its own “Otherness” and self-exoticization through female imagery. She argues instead that Kimbei’s photographs synthesized a diverse array of native visual signs that developed within the context of the emerging Japanese nationalism of the 1890s and early 1900s. While most existing studies on nineteenth-century Japanese souvenir photography employ a reception-based analysis, Wakita shifts to a “producer-oriented [approach that] is grounded on semiotic concern directed towards photographic intertextuality” (13). The “producers” she refers to include both Kimbei and the female models themselves, who, she argues, strategically used photographs as part of their public personas.

After an introduction discussing the book’s core issues, Staging Desires is organized around four key chapters. Chapter 1 provides a succinct history of early photography in Japan, the development of souvenir photography in particular, and an overview of the Kimbei Studio. Though there is little concrete evidence pertaining to Kimbei’s career trajectory, Wakita successfully pieces together its contours through a thorough investigation of existing archival sources. Initially trained as a colorist, Kimbei first worked in the studios of Beato and then Stillfried; he would later acquire the stock of both studios. Between 1878 and 1880 Kimbei set up his first business in Yokohama, which seems to have been a dealership selling photos taken by others rather than a photography studio. By 1885 advertisements in English-language tourist guides refer to him as a portrait photographer. Between 1885 and 1890 Kimbei operated as many as five different branches, which included a studio and a business selling paintings based on photographs. His willingness to innovate was a major reason for his success and longevity in a highly competitive business environment, and while not all of these branches remained open, he continued to adapt to new trends and technologies by offering merchandise such as postcards, collotypes, photo jewelry, and other “decorative photography” objects (51). By 1900 Kimbei claimed to be the largest studio in Japan, with over thirty employees and an annual income equivalent to several million dollars. One Japanese expert has estimated that some sixty percent of extant souvenir photographs are from the Kimbei Studio. The final section of this chapter attempts to trace changes in his ordering system, where the studio’s printed catalog retains the same title and stock number to refer to an image, but the actual image composition was revised with new imagery. This last section, while important, is somewhat difficult to follow and seemed a bit out of place in this chapter.

Chapter 2 examines the models in his female costume images. Though there is little information available to confirm the studio’s hiring practices, some of the women who appeared in Kimbei’s photos are identifiable as famous geisha from Tokyo entertainment districts. Geisha had ambivalent and contradictory status in both Japan and the West: they were known for setting standards of beauty and featured as models for promoting ideas tied to bunmei kaika (“civilization and enlightenment”), but they were also referred to as “women with disgusting jobs” (74–76). Perceptions about them shifted in the 1890s, and they became more firmly established as icons of Meiji femininity, equivalent to the female personifications of other countries (such as Lady Liberty). Wakita sees this development as occurring within the context of Foucauldian “bodily normalization” and argues that photography was directly linked to this shift, as photographic realism and visuality helped convey the “bodily physicality” of geisha, who were well trained in physical comportment (89). Photography also emphasized their photogenic qualities.

Chapter 3 engages in detailed image analysis, examining the visual rhetoric of Kimbei’s photos. Wakita’s concern here lies in unpacking how his images negotiated between the demands and expectations of the Western commercial market and the nationalist ideology of the 1890s. She begins by categorizing Kimbei’s catalog into occupations, portraits, and scenes of daily life and breaking down the gender split of the various subjects. Women were featured exclusively in the portrait-style images and those depicting domestic life and cultural aspects, whereas men typically appeared in photos showing social and economic components, a precedent initially developed by Beato. This division is key to Wakita’s analysis, which suggests that Kimbei’s female imagery can be equated with a deliberately feminized view of Japanese culture perpetuated in nationalist discourse. Visual sources of inspiration came from ukiyo-e woodblock prints, Chinese trade pictures, European engravings, and images by Beato and Stillfried. Kimbei’s photos aestheticized the precedents sets by Beato, incorporating native/insider knowledge such as an awareness of color subtleties and meanings. Kimbei’s images were further informed by contemporary debate on issues of female etiquette, education, and moral behavior tied to Japanese self-cultivation. Wakita argues that the photos ultimately embodied Meiji ideals of feminine beauty and virtue that rendered them as statements of “symbolic-cultural capital” (129).

Chapter 4 addresses issues concerning the public visibility of women in the Meiji period and how photographs of women were perceived. Wakita defines two different types of photographic practice. One involved carte-de-visite images of geisha, actors, and politicians, i.e., celebrity images of public figures, which were frequently reproduced and circulated widely. The other consisted of one-of-a-kind ambrotypes, a process preferred by ordinary people for private usage, as the singular copy allowed the sitter much greater control over the image. It thus helped to mediate what Wakita asserts was a cultural bias against the realism of photographic portraiture (particularly for portraits of women). Posing for Kimbei was a key form of self-promotion for “public” women. Wakita argues for photography being strategically used by courtesans and geisha to help increase their visibility, and ultimately functioning as a fetishized commodity (149). The very short conclusion reiterates the various layers of meaning embedded in Kimbei’s images discussed in the core chapters.

The book is distinguished by Wakita’s comprehensive and diligent research. She has consulted extensive collections across Europe, the United States, and Japan. It is obvious that she tried to verify misconceptions and clichés about Kimbei’s oeuvre, tracing them back to the extant primary sources to correct and expand the historical record. Wakita also creatively situates Kimbei’s work within a rich reading of late nineteenth-century Japanese visual sources and signs. She argues effectively that his images were not merely designed to cater to Western whims and ideas about Japan. Rather, they drew on an understanding of visual and general cultural references in contemporaneous Japan, such as the role of the women depicted as icons of feminine beauty and as models for appropriate etiquette. Her provocative discussion of the ways this rich photographic intertexuality was tied to nationalist rhetoric is a welcome expansion of the conventional understanding of souvenir photography. Scholars will also appreciate the extensive illustrations and appendices itemizing Kimbei’s photos.

Despite these strengths, there are aspects that reveal the status of this study as a revised version of Wakita’s 2010 German-language doctoral thesis. One is its narrow focus, especially given the paucity of information available in English about Kimbei and other nineteenth-century Japanese native photographers. An expanded discussion of Kimbei’s oeuvre would have been useful and could have been added without detracting from Wakita’s core argument about photographs of women. Further comparison of depictions of women by other Japanese photographers would also be beneficial in considering the ubiquity of the practices she identifies. In addition, the numerous theoretical references are not always treated satisfactorily, and some of these beg for further unpacking.

However, the most serious detriment to this volume is that it is marked by language errors that go well beyond the inevitable minor issues that creep into any manuscript. These include inconsistencies in spelling (with both Kimbei and Kinbei being used, for example, and Kusakabe being rendered as Kusamabe in at least one place), numerous erroneous or odd vocabulary choices, and perplexing mistakes in grammar and sentence structure. Some of these errors would have been easily fixed simply by running a basic automatic spelling and grammar check. Perhaps tied to these language issues, there are also several sections of the text where the organization of the argument seems haphazard. Additionally there is no index. Reimer publishes a number of German doctoral theses, but based on this example, they do not appear to offer an appropriate level of support, particularly for those who may be non-native speakers publishing in English. While the lack of a strong editorial hand significantly impacts the clarity of this text, specialists will nevertheless find it a valuable addition to the literature.