During my research for Daughters of the Samurai I spent many happy hours combing through photographs, immersing myself in the physical details of another time. The images that made it into the finished book were just a tiny sample, agonizing to choose. Here they are along with the best of the rest, organized by chapter.
Gallery 1: Prologue – Chapter 4
Gallery 2: Chapters 5-6
I stumbled across this site when I was looking for images of the world the Iwakura delegates encountered when they arrived in America in 1872. It contains the original sketches that accompanied Kunitake Kume’s account of the mission, Tokumei zenken taishi Bei-O kairan jikki [A True Account of the Ambassador Extraordinary & Plenipotentiary’s Journey of Observation through the United States of America and Europe]. The site is in Japanese, but if you follow these instructions you can click through dozens of drawings, organized by location:
–On the landing page, click the yellow rectangle over North America.
–Click any of the red dots for sketches from each of the Iwakura Mission’s stops: San Francisco, along the Transcontinental Railway, Salt Lake City, the Rockies, Chicago, Washington, etc.
I’ve included some of the sketches in Gallery 2, among many other images.
Gallery 3: Chapters 7-9
Gallery 4: Chapters 10-14
Click here for complete list of photo credits.
