Saturday 30th Movember: Yokohama, Japan

In the late nineteenth century Yokohama, a port south of Tokyo, was the most international city in Japan. It features in Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days, although, unlike our subject today, the author never even visited the city. Much later, in 1923, much of Yokohama was destroyed and over 30,000 people killed in an earthquake. Once rebuilt it was again destroyed, this time by the Americans, in World War Two.

Seismic upheavals galore.

There is quite a tradition of Englishmen dressing up in traditional Japanese costumes for their cabinet photographs - presumably so they could send their exotic portrait home. Here we have a specimen, taken by T Enami whose Yokohama studio opened in 1892. The opening sentence of his contemporary advertisement reads: "Photographs of every description taken in my Studio daily, and special attention given to those wishing to pose in Japanese costumes."

Cabinet photograph, T Enami, Yokohama, Japan.