Group of Samurai by the Sphinx in 1864

Atlantia · 19th August 2012, 03:03 PM

From this site.

"We turn back the clock to 1864, when a group of Japanese emissaries on a diplomatic mission to Europe posed for a photo in Giza, decked out in their full samurai regalia. Explains archaeologist Nicholas Reeves of the Metropolitan Museum of Art of this shot by photographer Antonio Beato.
[The mission's] aim was to persuade France to agree to the closing of the port of Yokohama to foreign trade, and allow Japan to retreat into isolation once more. The mission inevitably failed. In 1864, en route to Paris, the Ikeda mission visited Egypt. The stay was memorialised in one of nineteenth-century photography's most extraordinary images — the embassy's members, dressed in winged kamishimo costume and jingasa hats, carrying their feared long (katana) and short (wakizashi) swords, standing before the Giza Sphinx."

19th August 2012, 03:03 PM	#1
Atlantia Member Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: The Sharp end Posts: 2,928	Group of Samurai by the Sphinx in 1864 From this site. "We turn back the clock to 1864, when a group of Japanese emissaries on a diplomatic mission to Europe posed for a photo in Giza, decked out in their full samurai regalia. Explains archaeologist Nicholas Reeves of the Metropolitan Museum of Art of this shot by photographer Antonio Beato. [The mission's] aim was to persuade France to agree to the closing of the port of Yokohama to foreign trade, and allow Japan to retreat into isolation once more. The mission inevitably failed. In 1864, en route to Paris, the Ikeda mission visited Egypt. The stay was memorialised in one of nineteenth-century photography's most extraordinary images — the embassy's members, dressed in winged kamishimo costume and jingasa hats, carrying their feared long (katana) and short (wakizashi) swords, standing before the Giza Sphinx." Attached Images