ingekleurd

Amazing capture and info - congrats!

The ancient photo has beautiful pale tone, and how wonderful harmony of colours, in the Japanese armour.

i am loving your photographs. I am truly interested on the japanes culture

Wonderful image and an original Felix Beato! It might help increase views if you tagged it with the English form for 'Samoerai' - 'Samurai'. ? I have cited the images and the Archive on my page about the (Flickr) Commons: www.shapesoftime.net/pages/viewpage.asp?uniqid=13280 Best wishes and thank you for contributing to the Commons project - it is a wonderful aid for teaching and learning.

@Shapesoftime Thanks for the compliments. I have added Samurai to the title of the image and to the tag list. If you have any other tags that you think are appropriate, please feel free to add them.

Simply amazing. Thanks for sharing this kind of photo. Is the first time i have the joy of see something like this.

Amazing

superbe !

These postmen were called hikyaku (飛脚 or literally "flying legs") in Japanese. It is said that they ran the Tokyo Osaka route in 6 days or 90km a day, and in 4 and a halft days when carrying especially urgent mail or 120Km a day. It is also said that they ran in a special way to conserve energy but the wikipedia site says that it is not clear what this special way is though it is rumoured to be the "Nanba Running/Walking" form in which runners and walkers swing their right hand forward at the same time as their right leg, and vice versa, rather than in time with the opposite leg. There appears to be photographic proof of this theory here. And indeed the position of the postman pictured above is consistent with this theory. There is a saying in Japanese "Satsuma's Postman," which refers to the Satsuma (current day Kumamoto prefecture) region of Japan and postmen that arrived there were proverbially at least killed, or not allowed to return to whence they came, since the region was planning a revolution (with the Choushu region, current day Yamaguchi Prefecture) and did not wish its secret preparations to become known. So a "Satsuma's Postman" means someone who does not return. A famous Japanese Fedex like company has a "Hikyaku" postal service which uses its trucks combined with the Japanese postal service' post workers. The company sorts and transports, the postal workers deliver, and they claim faster times than leaving the whole delivery to the postal workers. I wonder the reason for the pole. The only mention I can see of the pole on the Japanese wikipedia page is the tradition of "Town postmen" to trail a small bell from their pole" so that people would hear them coming (and presumably deposit letters with them). But this man has no bell. Could the pole be a precursor of the mask, to prevent infectious disease (which was rife in Japanese cities)?