Following the Meiji Restoration, photographs became almost as popular as woodblock prints. By the 1890s, there were well over 800 professional photography studios in Japan, primarily situated in the port towns of Yokohama and Nagasaki, but also rapidly expanding to the major urban center of Tokyo. Photographers of this period often echoed traditional pictorial subjects from painting and ukiyo-e, but were also inventive and artistic. Subjects ranged from studio photography of beautiful women and urban scenes of shopkeepers, rickshaws, and peddlers, to natural wonders such as Mt. Fuji in the mist, cherry blossoms and temples. Ronin Gallery is pleased to open up a portal into the real and imagined world of modern Japan with our collection of Meiji-period photography. These images of traditional Japan still hold the same magic as they did when the world first saw them more than a century before.