There's something about seeing real people from that far back
Photographs of 19th Century Japan
51–60 of 137 posts
Re: Photographs of 19th Century Japan
#52[flagged]
You’re really underplaying how awful the life was for an average person in before-times. Sure, pretty buildings, different cultures, and etc. were more prominent. But also an average person would never be able to enjoy those in their lifetimes.
Not unlike how it went in a lot of places at the time; the problem with history is that they mainly focus on and make records of the upper echelons, the pretty parts. Few historians / writers / etc make notes of the common people. Some exceptions, of course, but you'd be forgiven for thinking Europe was mainly castles, knights and political intrigue back in the middle ages.
It hasn't changed much; in theory everyone has a camera in their pocket now to record the mundane, but in practice a lot of it is "content", where people put on a show for the camera.
My grandpa was an amateur photographer, he'd go out and make photos of local events, scenes, people, etc. His work has been donated to a regional museum and digitized, because there was little other visual records of these old (well, 50's) traditions.
I can't find them though. Some were uploaded to a Facebook page but that's a really poor platform for archiving / displaying works. I should reach out to my dad and start a project to build a website for this collection or something like that.
Re: Photographs of 19th Century Japan
#53[flagged]
Cultures evolve, borrow, remix - that's always been true, even long before globalization. People still find ways to hold onto local traditions, stories, food, language - sometimes because the outside world feels so loud.
Re: Photographs of 19th Century Japan
#54Having visited last year, the scenery around Toshogu Shrine in Nikko isn't all that different, if you manage to visit like we did first thing in the morning as soon as they open and before the tour buses rock up. (The shrine is surrounded by acres of sacred forest where construction is prohibited.) The cities like Kobe and Nagasaki, on the other hand, are completely unrecognizable.
Nikko really does feel like stepping back in time if you catch it early enough
Re: Photographs of 19th Century Japan
#55And this stuff is why I love either super creative science fiction or travelogues (and the formers are hard to find). You can try to imagine a brand new world or simply try to re-live our real and past world. To me that is even more amazing, as it often can be the door to understanding some things of today's cultures and/or discover lost little worlds. Currently I'm going through this book of a guy who cycled across…
Some video games try and do the former; I play too much FFXIV and a recurring theme there is that you go to a new area and you get the tourist's experience, tour the area, view the sights, meet the locals, figure out the local history and culture, etc.
Sure, it's kind of superficial, usually based on human civilizations / design trends / etc; that is:
* Heavensward: Europe / traditional knights and castles and church stuffs
* Stormblood: East-Asia / Japan, clearly a favorite thing to work on from the developers
* Shadowbringers: is actually pretty independent
* Endwalker: Rome / Greece on the one side, India on the other, philosophical existential crises in the late game (that part is actually really good, they invented multiple (7-8 or so?) different civilizations who all achieved some kind of immortality and pursued the meaning of life, ending up disillusioned)
* Dawntrail (latest): south & mesoamerica on the one side, cyberpunk sci-fi on the other
Re: Photographs of 19th Century Japan
#56What did we do to our world.
In ~150 years someone will pick some photos taken today and post them and someone will probably wonder the same thing. Go out and do some sightseeing - a lot of the sights in these photos still exist, but also, you look at these photos with different eyes than the people that grew up there do; changing how you look at your own environment or places of interest will probably also help.
Re: Photographs of 19th Century Japan
#57And this stuff is why I love either super creative science fiction or travelogues (and the formers are hard to find). You can try to imagine a brand new world or simply try to re-live our real and past world. To me that is even more amazing, as it often can be the door to understanding some things of today's cultures and/or discover lost little worlds. Currently I'm going through this book of a guy who cycled across…
Some video games try and do the former; I play too much FFXIV and a recurring theme there is that you go to a new area and you get the tourist's experience, tour the area, view the sights, meet the locals, figure out the local history and culture, etc. Sure, it's kind of superficial, usually based on human civilizations / design trends / etc; that is: * Heavensward: Europe / traditional knights and castles and church…
Yeah, I saw that concept but I always feel like I'm supposed to be 6 years old to enjoy the interactions and the dialogue (both in FFXIV and FFXV). Also the "tourist moment" felt too much the canned tourist experience where everything is perfect, clean and everyone nice.
Instead travelogues are not that, they are not about being perfect or beautiful, it's about the places and people being as they are, however they are.
Didn't try all ths games you mentioned, I will take a look. Thanks!
Re: Photographs of 19th Century Japan
#58>I’m once again struck by the fact that none of the people in these images are still with us. If any of them somehow returned to the land of the living, I’m not sure they’d recognise the Japan of today. On the other hand, if someone sees one of this pictures without any explanation, he will recognize it's made in Japan. I think Japan changed, but not so much.
Japan still is pretty isolationist or culturally conservative; I have no firsthand experience so this is all hearsay, but I gather the people living there are under a lot of societal / cultural pressure in how to behave, speak, live, etc. Foreigners get some leeway because they're foreign, but that's probably not so different wherever you go.
Re: Photographs of 19th Century Japan
#59And this stuff is why I love either super creative science fiction or travelogues (and the formers are hard to find). You can try to imagine a brand new world or simply try to re-live our real and past world. To me that is even more amazing, as it often can be the door to understanding some things of today's cultures and/or discover lost little worlds. Currently I'm going through this book of a guy who cycled across…
Is it "Around the world on a bicycle"? I, too, would like to know the name of this book. Sounds interesting!
Thomas Stevens, really an interesting character. He sometimes makes sweeping generalisations, which makes his writing even more real and not filtered.
Re: Photographs of 19th Century Japan
#60It would be great if there were photos of today for some of these old photos, especially for structures/places/scenery that still exists.