Japan: an exotic and mysterious country, a fairly unknown destination in the second half of the19th century. 1869 is the year of the Meiji reform: power is taken away from the Shogun Tokugawa and given back to the Emperor. Yokohama, a major harbour-city, experiences a boom in trade and tourism and opens up to the Western world.

During Shogunato access to foreigners was strictly limited. Felice Beato, of Venetian origins, a photographer and an adventurer, is one of the first Westerners to reach Japan where, as a pioneer of documentarist photography, he opens his own studio.

His pictures are precious not only for their quality but also for offering rare and valuable illustration of Japanese life in those days.

With the British illustrator Charles Wirgman, he creates Beato & Wirgman, Artists and Photographers combining his photographic skills with the artistic technique of his partner who specializes in print coloring. Very soon more colorists join in. It's a huge commercial success, so much so that they decide to open a real school, gathering many artists in Yokohama.

Beato's photographs were albumine prints, obtained by wet collodion process. The prints were then hand-colored with watercolors at the studio. In those days the photographic technique required long exposure: therefore shots had to be taken with the utmost attention. Local people would often pose with typical architecture on the backdrop.

The pictures narrated the daily life of an unknown country: samurai, geisha, monks. The Yokohama style photography, or Yokohama Shashin developed thanks to growing tourism. Travelers mesmerized by the exotic atmosphere would buy photo-albums as souvenirs.

Beato arrived in Japan in 1863. In 1866 his studio was ravaged by a fire that destroyed many of his works and in 1877 it was taken over by Stillfried & Andersen. In 1884 he moved to Egypt where he apparently opened a new photographic studio. In 1907 he went to Florence where he died in 1909.

The Yokohama School carried on with the tradition of photographs "in Beato's style" for many years after Beato's departure from Japan. His pictures nurtured the European imagination of the East: an exotic, stylized and idyllic ideal that flourished until the early 20th century.

Felice Beato's legacy was carried on by Adolfo Farsari, born in Vicenza, who acquired Beato's archive in 1885 - the Japan Photographic Association studio - from Stillfried & Andersen. He was to become known as one of the major promoters of photographic art in Japan in the late 19th century.

Adolfo Farsari arrives in Japan in 1878 as the manager of a cigar company. But soon, as a self-taught photographer, he puts up a blooming entrepreneurial activity. In a letter addressed to his sister in 1889 he writes: "I have numerous staff. 31 people including artists, printers etc. etc. as well as two maids and a cook".

Born from an upper middle-class family, Adolfo is a restless soul. He joins Garibaldi 's Thousand but in 1863 he boards a ship to New York. There he gets married, has two children and joins the unionist army. His last letter to his parents in Italy dates back to 1867. For 21 years he would give no news.

On January 17th, 1888 Luigi Farsari, Adolfo's father, receives a letter from Japan. "Now I am an artist, a photographer, a painter etc. etc. and business is booming. It's been 12 months now since I opened my studio and I've already done fantastic business."

The situation changes a few months later. On April 12, 1888 he writes: "My wife came twice to Japan to make peace etc. but I sent her back to New York where she is now and I hope she will never come bak. My eldest son died about 10 years ago of typhoid fever, (...). The other, as I said, died of poisoning when he was about 6 months and that was the cause of my misfortune."

And he goes on: "Now I live at peace, rather like a misanthrope, (...). But everybody knows and likes me in this city [...]". A few years later he returns to Italy, wearing oriental clothes, with his daughter Kiku. He dies in Vicenza in 1898, aged 57.

Farsari further developed and improved the technique of coloring photographic prints and opened a school. The pictures produced by the two photographers offer precious evidence of the culture and customs of Japan in the late XIX century. A country where Italians considerably contributed to the flourishing of photography as an entrepreneurial activity, attaining original results in style and art.

The letters written by Adolfo Farsari, the "prodigal son", are available at the website of Fondazione Archivio Diaristico Nazionale, a project that collects the stories of Italian citizens who travelled the world and left their mark: www.idiariraccontano.org/autore/farsari-adolfo/.