Ueno Hikoma

Ueno Hikoma was an early Japanese photographer, a famous protraitist. In 1838 he was born in Nagasaki as son of on of Ueno Toshinojō, the merchant who probably imported the first camera to Japan in 1848 for the daimyō Shimazu Nariakira who gave it to Ichiki Shirō for studying photography. The oldest persisting Japanese quality photograph was made with that camera in 1857, a portrait of the daimyō.

Ueno Hikoma came in contact with photography thru the Dutch naval officer Johannes L. C. Pompe van Meerdervoort who had a camera was was his teacher in western science. The Swiss photographer Pierre Rossier had been in Japan from 1859 to 1860 and taught the new wet-collodion process to some Japanese photographers, including Ueno Hikoma. Ueno decided to become photographer instead of scientist. In 1862 he opened his photographic studio and began to import cameras.