Statue of Ueno Hikoma in Nagasaki
1861
彦馬 上野
Ueno Hikoma was born on October 15, 1838 in Nagasaki, Japan. He was the son of Ueno Toshinojō (also known as Ueno Shunnojō) (1790-1851), a merchant in the employ of the Shimazu clan who in 1848 imported possibly the first camera in the country, a daguerreotype camera for the Shimazu daimyō, Nariakira.
Ueno Hikoma first studied Chinese classics; then in 1852, not long after his father's death, he entered the Nagasaki Medical College with a view to studying chemistry in order to help him run the family business, dealing in nitre and chintz dyeing. He eventually studied chemistry under the Dutch naval medical officer Johannes L. C. Pompe van Meerdervoort (1829-1908) after the latter's arrival in 1857. Pompe van Meerdervoort, who had a camera and photography manual though little experience as a photographer, also instructed Ueno Hikoma in photography.
In the autumn of 1862 Hikoma Ueno opened a commercial photographic studio by the Nakashima River in Nagasaki and he also began importing cameras. During their visits to Japan Ueno photographed Ulysses S. Grant in 1879 and the Russian crown prince (later Tsar Nicholas II) in 1891. With the help of such patronage, Ueno's studio operated until the end of the century.
Ueno himself taught many important nineteenth-century photographers, including Uchida Kuichi (1844-1875), Tomishige Rihei, Kameya Tokujirō, (1837-1922), Nakajima Shinzō, Nagai Nagayoshi, Noguchi Jōichi, Nakajima Seimin, Tanaka, Morita Raizō, Kikizu Maturoku, and Ueno Yoshima. Eventually, Ueno opened branches of his photographic studio in Vladivostok in 1890 and in Shanghai and Hong Kong in 1891.
He exhibited photographs in at least two World Expositions, the Vienna World Exposition of 1873 and the World Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, at which he won an award for "Good Taste and Artistic Finish".
(1790-1851)
