The Premise of Fidelity : Science, Visuality, and Representing the Real in Nineteenth-Century Japan

__The Premise of Fidelity__ puts forward a new history of Japanese visuality through an examination of the discourses and practices surrounding the nineteenth century transposition of "the real" in the decades before photography was introduced. This intellectual history is informed by a careful examination of a network of local scholars—from physicians to farmers to bureaucrats—known as Shohyaku-sha. In their archival materials, these scholars used the term __shashin__ (which would, years later, come to signify "photography" in Japanese) in a wide variety of medical, botanical, and pictorial practices. These scholars pursued questions of the relationship between what they observed and what they believed they knew, in the process investigating scientific ideas and practices by obsessively naming and classifying, and then rendering through highly accurate illustration, the objects of their study. This book is an exploration of the process by which the Shohyaku-sha shaped the concept of shashin. As such, it disrupts the dominant narratives of photography, art, and science in Japan, providing a prehistory of Japanese photography that requires the accepted history of the discipline to be rewritten. The Premise of Fidelity puts forward a new history of Japanese visuality through an examination of the discourses and practices surrounding the nineteenth century transposition of "the real" in the decades before photography was introduced. This intellectual history is informed by a careful examination of a network of local scholars--from physicians to farmers to bureaucrats--known as Shōhyaku-sha. In their archival materials, these scholars used the term shashin (which would, years later, come to signify "photography" in Japanese) in a wide variety of medical, botanical, and pictorial practices. These scholars pursued questions of the relationship between what they observed and what they believed they knew, in the process investigating scientific ideas and practices by obsessively naming and classifying, and then rendering through highly accurate illustration, the objects of their study. This book is an exploration of the process by which the Shōhyaku-sha shaped the concept of shashin. As such, it disrupts the dominant narratives of photography, art, and science in Japan, providing a prehistory of Japanese photography that requires the accepted history of the discipline to be rewritten The eye of the Shōhyaku-sha : between seeing and knowing -- Ways of conceptualizing the real : scripts, names, and Materia medica -- Modes of observation and the real : exhibition practices of the Shōhyaku-sha -- Picturing the real : questions of fidelity and processes of pictorial representation -- Shashin in the capital : the last stage of metamorphosis. The eye of the Shohyaku-sha : between seeing and knowing Ways of conceptualizing the real : scripts, names, and materia medica Modes of observation and the real : exhibition practices of the Shohyaku-sha Picturing the real : questions of fidelity and processes of pictorial representation Shashin in the capital : the last stage of metamorphosis. The Premise of Fidelity: Science, Visuality, and Representing the Real in Nineteenth century Japan uncovers the social and epistemological roles of the term shashin within the scientific community before the term came to mean photography.