Pounding Rice. Hand-colored albumen print

Yokohama, middle Meiji period (c. 1883–1897). 
20x25.3 cm. 

Attributed to Kusakabe Kimbei (1841–1934).
Other prints from the same negative, captioned "43. Pounding Rice", are in the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Syracuse University Art Museum, the Náprstek Museum, Prague (Josef Kořenský collection), and the Nagasaki University Library (no. 3022, photographer unidentified).

The image depicts four workers in a rice-cleaning shop (tsukigome-ya, 搗米屋). Three operate treadle pestles (karausu, 唐臼), stepping on the levers to raise the weighted pestles, which drop into mortars sunk in the floor and strip the bran from the grain, while the fourth sweeps the rice back into the mortar with a straw broom.

Unlike many genre scenes of the period, which were staged in the studio with hired models and props, this photograph was evidently taken on location in a working shop: the mortars are sunk into the floor, which is strewn with rice, and the men wear work coats bearing the shop's name on the collars. The poses, however, are still arranged for the camera.

Binding & condition

Unmounted. Good: light rubbing, small tear to the lower edge, ownership mark in pencil to the verso. Trimmed, without the negative caption.

References

Reproduced: Japan 1900: A Portrait in Colour (Cologne: Taschen, 2024), p. 80, as by Kusakabe Kimbei.