Shima Ryū

Who was Shima Ryū?

Shima Ryū was a Japanese artist and pioneering photographer. Originally from Kiryū, in what is now Gunma Prefecture, she studied at an art school in Edo where she met Shima Kakoku, a fellow student. The two married in 1855 and soon began moving about the Kantō region, possibly exhibiting their works along the way. At some point the couple learned photography, and in the spring of 1864 Ryū photographed her husband, thereby creating the earliest known photograph by a Japanese woman. A wet-plate print of this portrait remains in the Shima family archives. The Shimas operated a photographic studio in Edo in about 1865 to 1867, until Kakoku accepted a teaching position at Kaiseijo. Following her husband's death in 1870, Ryū returned to Kiryū where she opened her own studio. She died in 1900.