What we euphemisti­cal­ly refer to as the “Open­ing of Japan” cat­alyzed a peri­od of seis­mic upheaval for the proud for­mer­ly closed coun­try. Between the fall of the Toku­gawa shogu­nate in 1853 and the Mei­ji restora­tion in 1868, Japan­ese soci­ety changed rapid­ly due to the sud­den forced influx of for­eign cap­i­tal and influ­ence, much of it destruc­tive. “Unem­ploy­ment rose,” writes his­to­ri­an John W. Dow­er, “Domes­tic prices soared sky high…. Much of Japan was wracked by famine in the mid 1860s…. As if all this were not curse enough, the for­eign­ers also brought cholera with them.” They also brought pho­tog­ra­phy, and both West­ern and Japan­ese pho­tog­ra­phers doc­u­ment­ed not only the country’s pro­found trans­for­ma­tion, but also its tra­di­tion­al dress and cul­ture. Closed for 200 years, Japan became a source of end­less fas­ci­na­tion for West­ern­ers as arti­facts made their way across the sea. Among them was “an exten­sive pho­to­graph­ic doc­u­men­ta­tion of Japan,” notes the New York Pub­lic Library, and “of inter­ac­tion between the Japan­ese and for­eign­ers” (Com­modore Perry’s expe­di­tion to Tokyo Bay includ­ed a daguerreo­type pho­tog­ra­ph­er.) “In the broad­est …