At the Takebashi Gate monument across from Palaceside Building — inscription above, photo left, illustration right = photo top =.
Left looks like a painting but reads:
"Old Edo Castle Photo Album (Meiji 4), fig. 47 / Takebashi approach (Yokoyama Matsusaburo)"
Photographer Yokoyama = photo bottom, self-portrait = — early Meiji photographer, pupil of Shimooka Renjo (introduced August 23).
Born 1838 on Etorofu, raised in Hakodate; teens saw foreigners after port opening — no domestic schools. Failed Russia trip, studied in Shanghai 1864, learned from Shimooka in Yokohama.
At 30 he opened Tsutenkaku studio in Ueno; masterpiece "Old Edo Castle Photo Album" (1872) commissioned by museum founder Ninagawa Noritane — National Important Cultural Property. All 64 plates viewable online.
Wet collodion on French egg albumen; outlines faded — tinted by "Japan's first Western painter" Takahashi Yuichi for clarity.
Ninagawa's memo: preserve forms by photo before destruction — "a kind of exposition for posterity."
Yokoyama died at 46 in 1884 — called "Japan's Leonardo." More on his versatility later.
