This beautifully produced large-format photo collection is intended for the scholar. It is an illustrated historical accounting of all of the early photographers in Japan.
The author, a well-known photo historian and author of the 1996 "Early Japanese Images," states that this new work has four objectives: to provide curators and collectors with new research material, to give all available biographical detail of the early photographers, to stress the importance of ascertaining who took what, and to offer new research tools. These aims he further supports in another 2006 publication, "Old Japanese Photographs: A Collector's Data Guide."
Bennett's book also satisfies a less intentional fifth objective: He gives the interested layman a long look at the vanished Japan of more than a century ago -- photos, many of them here published for the first time, from private collections including the author's own.