Portrait of a Shinto priest wearing formal garments.

Category

Library Item

Item no

15125

Title

Portrait of a Shinto priest wearing formal garments.

Description

An elderly man wearing ornate Japanese robes stands in front of a six-panel painted screen.
He has a long white beard and is wearing a tall peaked headdress. His robes are made of Japanese patterned fabric; the yellow and red cloth is decorated with birds or dragons on a geometric background. His purple trousers are decorated with circular designs that look like 'mon' or Japanese crests. He is wearing 'tabi', traditional Japanese socks with a separation between the big toe and the other toes, and is holding a blue fan in his right hand.
The setting of the room is simple; the screen is open in front of a bare wall and there are tatami mats on the floor.

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 Shinto priest (or 'shinshoku') in his finest garments. 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 picture, the man is pictured 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. 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, meaning that it is made of sheets of folding paper fixed to bamboo ribs.
The man in this photograph wears broad trousers ('hakama') and a 'suikan', a traditional upper-body piece of clothing made from a particular type of fabric that had been soaked in water ('sui') and spread on a special frame to dry ('kan'). It is traditionally worn with an 'eboshi' hat and was usually worn by officials of lower rank. This rich garment is the main subject of this picture and is the only element that was hand-painted with bright colours; the simplicity of the setting also contrasts with the richness of this garment.

The six-panel screen in the background is a prop often used by the photographer to suggests an authentic Japanese interior. Indeed, the same screen can be seen in the photograph of a man painting pictures, also part of the Dyer collection (item no. 15167). This photograph was certainly taken in Baron Stillfried's studio. The creases on the man's trousers also suggest that they had been taken shortly beforehand from the photographer's wardrobe collection. The same way, it is possible that the man in this photograph is one of the many actors hired by Stillfried and not a genuine Shinto priest.

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Related subjects

Clothing and dress > Accessories > Fans

Clothing and dress > Accessories > Hats

Clothing and dress > Garments > Robes

People > Adults > Men

People > Religion > Shinto priests

Places > Asia > Japan