This year marks the 150th anniversary of the oldest-known photograph taken by a Japanese person. Yet it is only in recent years that Japanese have started to take a serious interest in the history of early photography in this country, according to Terry Bennett, a London-based photo-historian.

Just like ukiyo-e woodblock prints were a generation or two ago, old Japanese photographs are more highly valued overseas than in Japan. And just as the best examples of woodblock prints were once outside of Japan, much of the surviving stock of early Japanese photographs is still in Europe and the United States. This is because a large proportion of the earliest photographs of Japan were intended for export, while many of those that remained in Japan were lost to natural disasters, fire and war.

"Japanese are taking a fresh look at the early history of photography in their country," Bennett said in a recent interview with The Japan Times. "Until Japanese museums and collectors started buying back photographs during the economic boom years in the 1980s, few Japanese researchers had the opportunity to study them. And, at the same time, the photograph has only recently become an accepted tool for historians, to be used hand-in-hand with text sources."