Photograph album

These posed photographs—from an album produced, likely in Yokohama, for sale to Western tourists—depict two modes of transportation used in Meiji period Japan. Palanquins (kago), litters with chairs or small compartments conveyed by four humans on foot, had been a standard means of transport for centuries in Japan and elsewhere. About ten thousand palanquins were in operation in Tokyo at the beginning of the Meiji period. Rickshaws (jinrikisha) began to be manufactured in Japan in 1870. Thereafter, these human-powered vehicles with wheels rapidly replaced palanquins as Japan's primary mode of public transportation. More than 200,000 rickshaws were in operation in the country by the end of the nineteenth century.