Shima Kakoku

At this time Shima seems to have had some pictures published as book illustrations.

At some point the couple learned photography, and in the spring of 1864 Ryu photographed Kakoku, 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.

Later, Shima worked at Daigaku Tōkō (大学東校, the predecessor of the School of Medicine, University of Tokyo), and while there invented the first Japanese movable type, for the printing of medical textbooks.

Shima Kakoku died in 1870, and his wife returned to Kiryū where she opened her own photographic studio.

• Bennett, Terry. Photography in Japan: 1853–1912 Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle, 2006. ISBN 0-8048-3633-7 (hard)
• Nihon no shashinka (日本の写真家) / Biographic Dictionary of Japanese Photography. Tokyo: Nichigai Associates, 2005. ISBN 4-8169-1948-1. Pp. 208–209.(in Japanese) Despite the English-language alternative title, all in Japanese.

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