Accounts of Research Journeys to Qing China: Photographs of Historic Sites by Sekino Tadashi and Tsukamoto Yasushi

In the late Qing dynasty (1616–1912), with growing global interest in Chinese art and archaeology, particularly in the West and Japan, there were Japanese researchers who surveyed various parts of Qing China after having learned photography. Photography was invented in Europe in the first half of the 19th century as a practical means for research and recording, but the techniques required to take photographs were not widely known in Japan.

In 1906–07, Sekino Tadashi (1867–1935) and Tsukamoto Yasushi (1869–1937) of the School of Engineering, Imperial University of Tokyo (now The University of Tokyo), together with Hirako Hisashi (1877–1911), who was a part-time employee at the Tokyo Imperial Household Museum (now the Tokyo National Museum), surveyed and photographed various sites and cultural assets mainly in the ancient capitals of Luoyang in Henan province and Xi’an in Shaanxi province. Furthermore, Sekino surveyed the areas in and around Shandong province in 1907–08, while Tsukamoto explored Hebei, Shanxi, Henan, and Shandong provinces in 1908.

Some of the sites and landscapes captured in these photographs have changed drastically in their appearances or even disappeared altogether. Today, after a hundred years, these photographs, which are invaluable for studying architecture, archaeology, epigraphy, and art, show us vivid scenes of Qing-dynasty China.

This exhibition sheds light on three surveys carried out in China by the scholars of architecture, Sekino and Tsukamoto, during the late Qing dynasty, and features a portion of the photographs taken during these surveys.