Felice Beato established himself as a military photographer embedded with English colonial forces in the Middle East, India, and China. By the time he arrived in Japan in the early 1860s, the country was newly accessible to foreigners and undergoing rapid political restructuring that would culminate with the Meiji Restoration in 1868. From his studio in Yokohama, Beato made pictures of scenic landscapes, city views, and portraits of Japanese in traditional costume, marketing his photographs in bound albums that played an important role in shaping Western conceptions of Japanese society and identity.