Photographs of 19th Century Japan

What did we do to our world.

In some ways we made it better and in some ways we made it worse.

There was nothing to do back then. And if there was, it was crazy and/or reserved for the feudal lords. The primary income of the state was through alcohol taxes. Countries thought it was okay to invade other countries just to make themselves bigger/stronger countries. Nationalism, racism, sexism were the norm. Most people can't read/write. Information is scant and passed on by word of mouth.

(Re-reading what I wrote above, I'd like to clarify that all the stuff I wrote above (except perhaps the alcohol tax one?) is of course not specific to Japan.)

Interesting, my reaction to these photos was "no thank you". It's fun to have a glimpse at the past, but I have no desire to live back then.

In particular I'm happy to live in a modern, well-insulated home with climate control. Transportation is also a lot more convenient with cars, trains, and airplanes. And clothing and fashion of the day also looks very uncomfortable to me.

Some of the nature scenes look lovely. But there are still plenty of places in Japan where you can experience the same sense of natural beauty and solitude.

In ~150 years someone will pick some photos taken today and post them and someone will probably wonder the same thing. Go out and do some sightseeing - a lot of the sights in these photos still exist, but also, you look at these photos with different eyes than the people that grew up there do; changing how you look at your own environment or places of interest will probably also help.

Thanks for the insight, but how it is different from today?

- Countries now thought it IS okay to invade other countries just to make themselves bigger/stronger countries: There are currently many examples in the news.

- Nationalism, racism, sexism are the norm: Nationalism is obviously on the rise. Racism never disappeared, even being tattooed is seen as an excuse to deport people.

https://azmirror.com/2025/04/08/ice-director-envisions-amazo...

- Women and men are much more sexualized today than in my youth, despite the talk of feminism and #metoo.

- Most people can't read/write (see Piza results). Only 10% of people can understand a simple statistics.

- Information is scant (see social networks and disinformation)

For context, about my post, I am from France, and what I wrote is not specific to any country but seems to me to apply to all.

These photos are, ah, not representative (most historical artefacts of this type aren’t; part of why people tend to have an impression of Victorian London as basically hell on earth is that, unusually, photos _were_ taken of the nasty bits, but really it was no worse than anywhere else at the time).

You’d certainly prefer to live in Japan in 2025 than in 1860.