Portrait of a young Shinto priest

Category

Library Item

Item no

15157

Title

Portrait of a young Shinto priest

Description

A young Shinto priest stands wearing a white silk robe with purple tassels and a tall peaked headdress. He is holding a yellow and red paper fan in his right hand.
The setting of the room is simple; the photograph was taken indoors in front of a dark background, in the photographer's studio.
The man's garments and his lips have been hand-painted with subtle and light colours, while the rest of the picture has been left in black and white.

Artist / maker

von Stillfried-Ratenicz, Franz

Date

1881

Size

24 x 19.5 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.

This photograph shows a young Shinto priest (or 'shinshoku') in a simple silk dress. Pictures of religious scenes were very popular with Western tourists and many collections of early Japanese photographs throughout the world contain pictures of Shinto or Buddhist priests.

Shinto was an important form of worship during the Meiji Restoration and became the state religion in 1868. The ideas of Shinto are older than Japan itself as they were developed before the unification of the Japanese nation. Shinto is mainly based on the worship of 'Kami', deities associated with natural objects (rocks, trees, or places such as Mount Fuji), ancestors and concepts (such as natural processes associated with life, like fertility or growth). The prayers of worshippers and Shinto priests aim at purifying the soul by finding the balance between purity ('kiyome') and impurity ('kegare'), to live a peaceful and harmonious life.

In this particular picture, the man is represented with accessories traditionally associated with Shinto priests. The peaked hat - or 'eboshi'- is a type of headdress usually worn by Shinto priests during ritual ceremonies. However, this particular form of 'eboshi' was worn by younger priest candidates. He is wearing a saifuku, the formal silk dress worn by priests when performing religious ceremonies.
In Shinto ritual, the fan is also a highly symbolic object and is commonly used with ritual vestments. The hand fan on this picture is of the 'kawahori' type, which means that it is made of sheets of folding paper fixed to bamboo ribs.

Another photograph in the Dyer collection (item no. 15124) shows an older Shinto priest in richer garments. This young priest is probably an actor or one of the many models that Stillfried used to hire for his compositions.

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Related images

Related subjects

Clothing and dress > Accessories > Fans

Clothing and dress > Accessories > Hats

Clothing and dress > Garments > Kimonos

People > Adults > Men

People > Religion > Clergy

People > Religion > Shinto priests

Places > Asia > Japan