Horie Kuwajirō was an early Japanese

Japanese people

The are an ethnic group originating in the Japanese archipelago and are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries...

 photographer and science writer.

Horie studied rangaku

Rangaku

Rangaku is a body of knowledge developed by Japan through its contacts with the Dutch enclave of Dejima, which allowed Japan to keep abreast of Western technology and medicine in the period when the country was closed to foreigners, 1641–1853, because of the Tokugawa shogunate’s policy of national...

, specifically chemistry, at the Nagasaki Naval Training Center

Nagasaki Naval Training Center

The was a naval training institute, between 1855 when it was established by the government of the Tokugawa shogunate, until 1859, when it was transferred to Tsukiji in Edo....

 where J. L. C. Pompe van Meerdervoort

J. L. C. Pompe van Meerdervoort

Johannes Lijdius Catharinus Pompe van Meerdervoort was a Dutch physician based in Nagasaki, Japan...

 was an instructor. In addition to chemistry, Pompe van Meerdervoort taught photography. When Swiss photographer Pierre Rossier

Pierre Rossier

Pierre Joseph Rossier was a pioneering Swiss photographer whose albumen photographs, which include stereographs and cartes-de-visite, comprise portraits, cityscapes, and landscapes...

 arrived in Japan in 1858 on a commission from Negretti and Zambra

Negretti and Zambra

The firm Negretti and Zambra was a producer of scientific and optical instruments and also operated a photographic studio based in London, England...

, he taught wet-collodion process

Collodion process

The collodion process is an early photographic process. It was introduced in the 1850s and by the end of that decade it had almost entirely replaced the first practical photographic process, the daguerreotype. During the 1880s the collodion process, in turn, was largely replaced by gelatin dry...

 photography to Horie and others, including his friend Ueno Hikoma

Ueno Hikoma

was a pioneer Japanese photographer, born in Nagasaki. He is noted for his fine portraits, often of important Japanese and foreign figures, and for his excellent landscapes, particularly of Nagasaki and its surroundings...

 (1838 – 1904) and Maeda Genzō

Maeda Genzo

Maeda Genzō was a Japanese photographer from northern Kyūshū. In Nagasaki he studied photography under Jan Karel van den Broek and J. L. C. Pompe van Meerdervoort. Neither of these teachers was an experienced photographer, and their attempts to produce photographs were largely failures...

 (1831 – 1906). It is possible that Horie accompanied Rossier around Nagasaki while the latter took photographs of priests, beggars, the audience of a sumo

Sumo

is a competitive full-contact sport where a wrestler attempts to force another wrestler out of a circular ring or to touch the ground with anything other than the soles of the feet. The sport originated in Japan, the only country where it is practiced professionally...

match, the foreign settlement, and a group portrait of Philipp Franz von Siebold

Philipp Franz von Siebold

Philipp Franz Balthasar von Siebold was a German physician and traveller. He was the first European to teach Western medicine in Japan...

's son Alexander

Alexander von Siebold

Alexander George Gustav von Siebold was a German translator and interpreter active in Japan during the Bakumatsu period and early Meiji period...

 and several samurai.

In 1860 or 1861 Horie bought a wet-plate camera. The purchase, which included photographic chemicals, was funded by the daimyō of the Tsu

Tsu, Mie

is the capital of Mie Prefecture, Japan. The city of Tsu is located on Ise Bay, east of the city. Tsu is bounded to the north by Suzuka and Kameyama; to the west by Iga, Nabari, and Nara Prefecture; and to the south by Matsuzaka city.-History:...

 clan, Tōdō Takayuki, and the price was 150 ryō

Ryo

Ryo may refer to:* The Japanese kana digraph ryo, ryō, or ryoh * Ryō , a gold piece in pre-Meiji era Japan worth about sixty monme or four kan...

. Apparently the photographic equipment was of such interest to Ueno that he chose to become a subject of the Tsu clan in order to have access to it at the clan residence in Edo

Edo

, also romanized as Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of the Japanese capital Tokyo, and was the seat of power for the Tokugawa shogunate which ruled Japan from 1603 to 1868...

. In 1861 Horie photographed Ueno at work in the Tsu clan's laboratory in Edo

Edo

, also romanized as Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of the Japanese capital Tokyo, and was the seat of power for the Tokugawa shogunate which ruled Japan from 1603 to 1868...

 (now Tokyo

Tokyo

, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...

). In 1862 Ueno and Horie co-wrote a textbook titled Shamitsu kyoku hikkeithat comprised translated extracts from ten Dutch science manuals and which included an appendix titled Satsueijutsu [The Technique of Photography] describing techniques of collodion process photography as well as Nicéphore Niépce

Nicéphore Niépce

Nicéphore Niépce March 7, 1765 – July 5, 1833) was a French inventor, most noted as one of the inventors of photography and a pioneer in the field.He is most noted for producing the world's first known photograph in 1825...

's asphalt printing method. The appendix also provided the first published account in Japan of lithographic printing. Horie himself taught pharmacology to Uchida Kuichi

Uchida Kuichi

was a pioneering Japanese photographer from Nagasaki. He was greatly respected as a portrait photographer and was the only photographer granted a sitting to photograph the Emperor Meiji....

, who later became a celebrated photographer in his own right.