The Executioner, 1860s
Hand-colored albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative
Miami University Art Museum
2019.13.1
Italian-British photographer Felice Beato was based in Japan from 1863 to 1884. In this scene he recreates the execution of Shimidzu Seiji, a Japanese man who murdered two British officers around that time. The studio backdrop includes Mt. Fuji, a famous Japanese religious pilgrimage destination highly romanticized in popular tourist travel-prints and photographs. Beheading by sword was a common capital punishment in the East at the time. Its inclusion in this collection was most likely designed to shock Western viewers as well as feed their desire to understand the East as suspended in a barbaric past. Ironically, “barbarian” was also a common term used by the Japanese to describe Western foreigners. -Written by Maria Jose DeSantiago Galan