This ambrotype dates to a time when Japanese photographers used the new medium of photography to record the vibrancy and curiosity of a newly modern nation. Unlike European photographers who had set up commercial studios in Japan in the 1860s and created staged photographs of Japanese “types” (the samurai, the geisha, the peasant laborer, the tattooed man, etc.), this unknown Japanese photographer portrayed the young men in traditional clothing but with modern hairstyles. The elegant, simple kiri (paulownia) wood case was a popular type of presentation in 1870s Japan, quite different from the more decorative Western cases.