Shima Ryū

• Name — Shima Ryū • Born — 1823 • Died — 1900 • Field — Photography Shima Ryū was a Japanese artist and pioneering photographer.

Originally from Kiryū, in what is now Gunma Prefecture, Ryū studied at an art school in Edo (now Tokyo) where she met Shima Kakoku (1827–1870), a fellow student. The two married in 1855 and soon began moving about the Kantō region, possibly exhibiting their works along the way.

• Illustration — A wet plate photograph of Shima Kakoku by his wife, Shima Ryū in 1864. This is believed to be the first photograph taken by a Japanese woman. At some point the couple learned photography, and in the spring of 1864 Ryū photographed her husband, thereby creating the earliest known photograph by a Japanese woman. The negative is on deposit at the Tojo Historical Museum, a wet-plate print of this portrait remains in the Shima family archives and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston has an albumen print. The Shimas operated a photographic studio in Edo in about 1865 to 1867, until Kakoku accepted a teaching position at Kaiseijo. Following her husband's death in 1870, Ryū returned to Kiryū where she opened her own studio. She died in 1900.