Hi, there!
As we promised you in the previous blog of ours, we will introduce the ‘value’ and ‘appeal’ of the “Sakubei Yamamoto Collection” to you from this time downward.
The “Sakubei Yamamoto Collection” is composed of a total of 697 materials including 589 pictorial records of coal mines, diaries, memorandum books, other manuscripts, and memorials. The bare bones of its appeal lie in the “pictorial records of coal mines” in ink and/or watercolors.
The subject matter of these pictorial records is focused on the details of mining by hand and pit workers’ life at small and middle-scale coal pits mainly from around 1900 to 1920, which Sakubei Yamamoto (1892-1984) experienced himself from age 7 or 8 to his youth.
His pictorial records of mechanized pits in the Showa era (1926-1989) are small in number, and Sakubei says, “The reason is that it is more suitable to use cameras in recording coal mining in the era.”
Indeed, we can hardly find photographs especially taken underground among records of Japanese coal mines in the Meiji (1868-1912) and Taisho (1912-1926) eras.
Even in Britain where the industrial revolution started earliest in the world, there are few pictorial and photographic records of early underground mining work left except a few drawings by professionals or some photographs of the outsides of coal mines and miners on the surface.
One reason is that it is necessary to use flash lights in photographing dark underground and that the magnesium flash light in the old days and later flash bulbs could cause gas or coal dust explosions. Even in the days when the battery-powered strobe light became available, cameras brought underground were frequently clogged up with coal dust without operative dustproof camera cases.
The above reasons made the “Sakubei Yamamoto Collection” as “visual and specific records by a former pit worker who experienced mining underground” extremely exceptional and valuable worldwide.
The collection is composed of very important materials from which we can learn how pit workers at that time worked and mined coal, which became the ‘fuel’ or motive power for the industrial revolution and modernization of Japan.
We will tell you more details about the characteristics and appeal of the “Sakubei Yamamoto Collection” next time!
日本語訳はコチラ
