Photography arrived in Japan at a time of great transition following the forced opening of the country’s ports to foreign trade and the restoration of Imperial rule in 1868, which dramatically restructured the country’s political systems. Western technologies, including photography, proliferated and Hikoma Ueno was among the first generation of Japanese photographers who learned photographic techniques from Westerners. Ueno became an importer of cameras, ran a highly successful studio in Nagasaki, and trained many other photographers. This portrait of a samurai is notable, as political changes would soon render the samurai obsolete.