The very first photographs of Japan were fascinating to the Western world, causing a wave of enthusiasm in the 1870s and 1880s, which then found expression in art, culture and society. One of the first Europeans in the middle of the nineteenth century to travel the externally isolated country was the renowned photographer and war correspondent Felice Beato. The photographs he created from the 1860s are now published for the first time and are complemented by works of other photographers. And thus a unique picture of the native Japanese culture is portrayed, showing the Japanese feudal state in one-off portraits, landscapes and architectural photographs prior to the transition from the Edo to the Meji period (1868). The impressive collection of these earliest pictures trace back to the Swiss diplomat Aime Humbert (1819-1900), who travelled Japan in 1863/64 and negotiated the first amity and commerce treaty between the two states.
