栃木県

This gate is the entrance to the inner court of Tosho-gu. Tosho-gu was built in Nikko to enshrine the remains of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the founder of hte Tokugawa Shogunate. Located here. The same photo is in the collection of Nagasaki University. NPL also has a photo by Kusakabe taken from inside. NOW

Hi, this photo has been discussed in one of the threads in the Flickr Commons group, and we'd love to have this added to the group pool!

So that image was hand-tinted then?

Yes. The quality is so good that it's easy to believe it's an early, washed-out chemical/light colorization, but this was done by artists. I'm not clear on the specifics of the process (eg, individually done by brush or performed with a block-printing system). A brief introduction is in the Wikipedia article hand-colouring.

This image has been used in the indicommons.org post: Yomei Gate

anybody interested in 19th century Japan, I strongly recommend to read "Unbeaten Tracks in Japan" by Isabella Bird. She travelled around Japan on her own, on horseback in the 1880s from Yokohama, to Tokyo, via Imaichi, Niigata, Yamagata, Aomori up to Hokkaido to study the Ainu - fascinating travelogue! 邦訳は「日本奥地紀行」

Now (from @8mitsu's photostream)

Now (via @rebeccakatzenberg ; different angle):