Women in a rickshaw

Category

Library Item

Item no

15138

Title

Women in a rickshaw

Description

Two young women with geisha style make-up are about to be carried away from a house in a rickshaw ('jinrikisha'), pulled by two men. One of the women is holding a paper parasol ('wagasa') to protect them from the sun. They are both wearing casual kimonos.
The rickshaw is made of wood and has a folded cover at the rear of the seat. It is pulled by two men, one holding the handles and one with a rope attached to the front. They both wear tight 'matahiki' pants and 'happi' indigo coats with straight sleeves and the same crest ('mon') in the back. The two men wear their hair short in a Western style.
They are in front of a wooden house with a tiled roof. The house has Western-style features such as the tiles and the glass window with blinds on the roof. The photograph was taken outdoors, perhaps in the same courtyard as the photograph from the same album showing tattooed palanquin bearers.

Artist / maker

von Stillfried-Ratenicz, Franz

Date

1881

Size

19.5 x 24 cm

Type

Photograph

Location

Art and Design Library

This item is part of a collection of prints from the studio of Baron Franz von Stillfried-Ratenicz, an Austrian photographer practising in Japan in the late 1870's. Von Stillfried ran a studio in Yokohama at the same time as his brother Raimund, who was also known as 'Baron Stillfried'. This caused a great deal of confusion with the local residents and visitors to Japan in the Meiji Period, and with art historians today.

This album, which dates from 1879-83, comprises 67 separate mounted prints presented in a lacquerware box. Albums of this kind were popular among foreign tourists, who frequently selected the individual prints they wished to include from the studio's collection. Many of these albumen prints were hand tinted. This was a laborious process for which von Stillfried employed, at the height of his success, a substantial number of Japanese workers.

Rickshaw carriers such as the ones in this photograph were called 'rokushaku' and were distinguished from palanquin bearers. The rickshaw was invented in 1869 by Izumi Yosuke and became extremely popular in Japan in the 1870s: for instance, there were about 56,000 of them in Tokyo in 1872. The simple palanquin was nevertheless still popular in mountainous areas where they were easier to use.
Rickshaws were used to transport one or two people and the number of 'rokushaku' pulling it depended on the number of passengers. The wheels were at first made of wood but were later covered with rubber to give the passengers a more comfortable ride. The cover at the back of the seat could be open to protect them from rain or sunlight.

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Related images

Related subjects

Clothing and dress > Accessories > Parasols

Places > Asia > Japan

Transport > Land > Rickshaws