A hand-coloured albumen print by Kusakabe Kimbei depicting the Ryounkaku tower and a bustling street scene in Asakusa, Tokyo, circa 1890.

This hand-coloured albumen print by Kusakabe Kimbei captures a street scene in the Asakusa district of Tokyo during the Meiji period. The composition is dominated by the Ryounkaku, a twelve-storey brick tower that was a modern marvel of its time, visible in the distance. The foreground features a bustling thoroughfare filled with pedestrians dressed in traditional attire, moving beneath tall, decorative banners that signal a festival or public event. The presence of these banners adds a vertical rhythm to the scene, contrasting with the horizontal flow of the crowd.

Kusakabe Kimbei was a prominent figure in the Yokohama photography scene, having worked as an assistant to Felice Beato and Baron Raimund von Stillfried before establishing his own studio. His work catered largely to foreign tourists and collectors who sought visual records of a rapidly changing Japan. The process of hand-colouring, applied here with precision, was a standard practice in his studio to satisfy the aesthetic preferences of the international market. The palette remains muted, reflecting the natural ageing of the albumen paper and the specific pigments used by the studio artists.

This image provides a record of urban life in Tokyo before the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, which destroyed the Ryounkaku. The print documents the intersection of traditional Japanese customs and the encroaching influence of Western-style architecture. The inclusion of the tower, with its distinct octagonal design, marks the era as one of rapid modernisation. The photograph functions as a window into the daily life of the period, capturing the texture of the street, the attire of the citizens, and the atmosphere of a public gathering in late nineteenth-century Japan.