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Flagstaff Hill Maritime Museum and Village
Domestic object - Spoon, circa 1878
This medium-sized dessert spoon is from the wreck of the LOCH ARD, a Loch Line ship of 1,693 tons which sailed from Gravesend, London, on 2 March 1878 with 17 passengers and a crew of 36 under Captain George Gibbs. “The intention was to discharge cargo in Melbourne, before returning to London via the Horn with wool and wheat”. Instead, on 1 June 1878, after 90 days at sea, she struck the sandstone cliffs of Mutton Bird Island on the south west coast of Victoria, and sank with the loss of 52 lives and all her cargo. The manifest of the LOCH ARD listed an array of manufactured goods and bulk metals being exported to the Colony of Victoria, with a declared value of £53,700. (202 bills of lading show an actual invoice value of £68, 456, with insurance underwriting to £30,000 of all cargo). Included in the manifest is the item of “Tin hardware & cutlery £7,530”. This dessert spoon is one of 482 similar items of electro-plated cutlery from the LOCH ARD site, comprising spoons and forks of various sizes but all sharing the same general shape or design and metallic composition. 49 of these pieces display a legible makers’ mark — the initials “W” and “P” placed within a raised diamond outline, which is in turn contained within a sunken crown shape — identifying the manufacturer as William Page & Co of Birmingham. An electroplater’s makers’ marks, unlike sterling silver hallmarks, are not consistent identifiers of quality or date and place of manufacture. A similar line of five impressions was usually made to impress the consumer with an implication of industry standards, but what each one actually signified was not regulated and so they varied according to the whim of the individual foundry. In this case, the maker’s marks are often obscured by sedimentary accretion or removed by corrosion after a century of submersion in the ocean. However sufficient detail has survived to indicate that these samples of electro-plated cutlery probably originated from the same consignment in the LOCH ARD’s cargo. The generally common range of marks are drawn from 255 tea spoons, 125 dessert spoons, and 99 table forks. These marks are clearly visible in 66 instances, while the same sequence of general outlines, or depression shapes, is discernible in another 166 examples. Suggested trade names for William Page & Co’s particular blend of brass plating are ‘roman silver’ or ‘silverite’. This copper alloy polishes to a lustrous gold when new, discolouring to a murky grey with greenish hue when neglected. The LOCH ARD shipwreck is of State significance – Victorian Heritage Register S 417.Unrestored dessert spoon from the wreck of the LOCH ARD. The spoon design has a flattened fiddle-back handle, with a thin stem or shank, flared collar, and a shallow rounded bowl. The spoons metallic composition is a thin layer of brass alloy which has partially corroded back to a nickel-silver base metal. 50% original plate, 20% concretion, and 15% verdigris. There is a plain heraldic shield embossed on upper rear of spoon bowl (ratstail). Spoon is slightly bent.flagstaff-hill-maritime-museum, shipwreck-coast, flagstaff-hill-maritime-village, electroplated cutlery, loch ard shipwreck, william page and co, birmingham brass plating, dessert spoons -
Coal Creek Community Park & Museum
Bottle, glass, c. 1885
150 years of experience and commitment. Norwegians have been producing and exporting cod liver oil for more than 1000 years. But it was not before 1645 it was reported that cod liver oil could be used to prevent and cure disease. At the end of the 18th century the first scientific article was published to support this. In the middle of the 19th century, the pharmacist Peter Möller observed that people along the west coast of Norway consuming cod liver oil regularly were rarely ill. He dedicated himself to finding out how this healthy liquid could be produced with better taste and pureness at a lower price. He developed a method of using steam to extract the oil from fresh cod livers. Based on this technological advance, the company Peter Möller was founded in 1854 in Lofoten on Norway’s arctic coast, where you find pure, cold, clean seas and high quality raw material. Peter Joachim Möller (1793-1869) At first Möller’s Cod Liver Oil was believed to be a good source of vitamin D and A, and the health benefits were associated with these vitamins. Peter Möller believed, however, that there were other significant benefits from fatty acids and other ingredients in the cod liver oil – both known and unknown. Peter Möller was dedicated to understanding more about these benefits. His dedication and commitment is clear in Möller's vision to improve people’s health by delivering the highest quality omega 3 products. Timeline 1793 Peter Möller is born in Røros, Norway 26 April. 1819 Peter Möller travels to Christiania (Oslo) and is employed by the pharmacist Frantz Peckel at the Svane chemist. He is employed on condition that he passes his pharmaceutical exam within one year. 1822 Graduated as a pharmacist with a unanimous first grade and with the award of the Professor's special satisfaction. 1842 Together with professors A. Holst and Chr. Boeck, Peter Möller participates in the commission which develops the first Norwegian Pharmacopoeia. 1853 Peter announces his method to cod liver oil works along the coast. He equips cod liver oil factories with new equipment in Lofoten, Ålesund and Kristiansund. The facility outside Ålesund is the most important for testing the method. 1854 The Peter Möller company is established as production has started at the three factories. Sales are lower than anticipated even though the quality is considerably better with the new method. The consumers of cod liver oil had been used to the fact that “good medicine must taste bad” and would not believe that the new and better quality was as healthy. Therefore, the following years are used to introduce consumers to the product, and also to convert more producers to the new method. 1869 Peter Möller dies. There are 70 cod liver oil steamers which use his steam rendering method, and 5000 barrels are produced every year. Möller’s company increases the quality by better routines for quality controls. 1870 Severin A Heyerdal, Möller’s son-in-law, assumes the leadership of the firm after Peter's death. He continues the work by improving the quality of the cod liver oil. The goal was to make it as pure and unaltered as in the liver. At this time, Möller had already started selling its product in the USA. In 1870, WH Schieffelin & Co. ("The oldest drughouse in America") was engaged by Peter Möller in the USA. 1881 Frantz Peckel Möller assumes the leadership of the Peter Möller company. He saw it as his duty to further the work on cod liver oil, and through a combination of solid scientific education and an eminent sense of the great mercantile possibilities, he made Möller’s cod liver oil the number one in the world market. 1914 The first world war leads to Möller’s bottled cod liver oil being shut out of the export market. However, domestic sales are good. 1924 The subsidiary Møystad Möller & Co. is established for bulk exports and the Association of Medicinal Cod liver oil Exporters is established in Bergen in 1925. 1925/26 The green bottles are introduced. Medicinal cod liver oil exports remain almost constant, while total Norwegian cod liver oil exports increase. 1938 The factory on the Løren grounds in Oslo, Norway is built. The factory is in the same place today. Peter Möller’s Pharmaceutical Laboratorium A/S is also established to separate out the scientific business. Investment is made in a new facility for refining and bottling veterinary cod liver oil, and increased production of industrial cod liver oil. 1940 The outbreak of the 2nd world war sees exports fall dramatically, while cod liver oil’s significance as a dietary supplement receives increased attention. Domestic sales increase strongly. 1945 After the war, medicinal cod liver oil retains its high status as an important dietary supplement in the “rebuilding" of the country. Cod liver oil becomes an ”emergency product in ravaged areas where the supply situation is difficult. Competition from other countries such as the USA, England and Iceland increases, and Norway no longer dominates the market. 1983 Möller’s cod liver oil in capsule form is launched and palatable cod liver oil is launched. 1990 Peter Möller A/S merges with Orkla Borregaard A/S (now ORKLA) 2005 Peter Möller merges with CollettPharma. The new company is called MöllerCollett. 2007 Merger between MöllerCollet and DanskDroge. The new company is called Axellus. Oval in section with a thin neck, mauve tinted clear glass bottle with text embossed on side.On side : 'P.MOLLER', 'OL JECOR', 'GADOR VER', 'CHRISTIANIA'.cod liver oil, norway, peter moller, christiana, oslo -
City of Moorabbin Historical Society (Operating the Box Cottage Museum)
Containers, matchbox 'Redhead' with matches, 20thC
On 15th December 1909, Bryant & May, Australia’s first match factory at Church Street, Richmond, Victoria. was opened by The Honourable Alfred Deakin, Prime Minister of Australia, and Mrs. Deakin. It was heralded by the first Commonwealth Government of newly-federated Australia because the government of the day was anxious to encourage secondary industry and pledged tariff protection of local manufacturers. The building was constructed in 1909 as the Empire Works to a design by prolific Melbourne architect William Pitt and was purchased soon after by British safety match manufacturer Bryant and May, who significantly expanded the building, adding another level and the landmark clock tower. Bryant and May were unique in that they operated as a model factory, providing workers with conditions and amenities that even today seem generous. These included a dining hall and sports facilities such as a tennis court and bowling green which were constructed in the 1920s. Bryant and May ceased Australian match manufacture in the early 1980s as a result of import competition. Their iconic Redheads matches are now imported from Sweden. The complex has since been converted for use as offices and showrooms but is extremely well preserved. It is listed on the Victorian Heritage Register. Bryant and May was a United Kingdom (UK) company created in the mid-nineteenth century specifically to make matches. Their original Bryant and May Factory was located in Bow, London. They later opened other match factories in the United Kingdom and Australia, such as the Bryant and May Factory, Melbourne; and owned match factories in other parts of the world. Bryant and May survived as an independent company for over seventy years, but went through a series of mergers with other match companies and later with consumer products companies. To protect its position Bryant and May merged with or took over its rivals. In 1971 the Northern Ireland factory, Maguire & Patterson closed down following a terrorist attack.. In the 1980s, factories in Gloucester and Glasgow closed too leaving Liverpool as the last match factory in the UK, until December 1994. . The registered trade name Bryant and May still exists and it is owned by Swedish Match, as are many of the other registered trade names of the other, formerly independent, companies within the Bryant and May group. Two French chemists, Henri Savene and Emile David Cahen, proved in 1898 that the addition of phosphorus sesquisulfide meant that the substance was not poisonous, that it could be used in a "strike-anywhere" match, and that the match heads were not explosive. British company Albright and Wilson, was the first company to produce phosphorus sesquisulfide ( Red Phosphorous) matches commercially. The company developed a safe means of making commercial quantities of phosphorus sesquisulfide in 1899 and started selling it to match manufacturers. Matches were first produced by Bryant & May in Australia in 1909. The Redhead name applies to the red striking heads of the matches which were introduced to Australia in 1946. The logo on the matchbox depicted the head and shoulder of a redheaded woman and has had four major updates since that time with a number of special issues depicting birds, animals and notable persons also produced.The Bryant & May Ltd factory in Church St Richmond is a listed building and has been converted to apartments following the closure of the Company 1980. Bryant & May's Ltd were influential in fighting against the dreadful disease known as Phossy jaw which was caused by white phosphorus used in the manufacture of the early matches. They were also the object of the 'Match Girls Strike' in London 1888, which won important improvements in working conditions and pay for the mostly female workforce working with the dangerous white phosphorus. The public were slow to purchase these safety matches because of the higher price .A box of safety matches with unused matches made by Bryant & May Pty Ltd , Richmond Victoria Australia. The tray containing the matches slides inside the open ended cover.. The striking patch is on both sides of the cover. Av. CONTENTS 50 MADE IN AUSTRALIA / Brymay / 1/3 / Safety Matches / Redheads / a colour picture of a Kookaburra / Laughing KOOKABURRAsafety matches, bryant & may pty ltd, phossy jaw disease, early settlers, moorabbin, bentleigh, cheltenham, lights, lamps, tobacco, white phosphorous, phosphorus sesquisulfide, swedish match pty ltd, pitt william, savens henri, cahen emile david , richmond victoria, -
City of Moorabbin Historical Society (Operating the Box Cottage Museum)
Manufactured Objects, safety matches 'Redheads' 2015, c2015
This is a current example of the 'Redhead' logo used by Bryant & May Ltd Richmond,Victoria, Australia c 1946 - 1980 On 15th December 1909, Bryant & May, Australia’s first match factory at Church Street, Richmond, Victoria. was opened by The Honourable Alfred Deakin, Prime Minister of Australia, and Mrs. Deakin. It was heralded by the first Commonwealth Government of newly-federated Australia because the government of the day was anxious to encourage secondary industry and pledged tariff protection of local manufacturers. The building was constructed in 1909 as the Empire Works to a design by prolific Melbourne architect William Pitt and was purchased soon after by British safety match manufacturer Bryant and May, who significantly expanded the building, adding another level and the landmark clock tower. Bryant and May were unique in that they operated as a model factory, providing workers with conditions and amenities that even today seem generous. These included a dining hall and sports facilities such as a tennis court and bowling green which were constructed in the 1920s. Bryant and May ceased Australian match manufacture in the early 1980s as a result of import competition. Their iconic Redheads matches are now imported from Sweden. The complex has since been converted for use as offices and showrooms but is extremely well preserved. It is listed on the Victorian Heritage Register. Bryant and May was a United Kingdom (UK) company created in the mid-nineteenth century specifically to make matches. Their original Bryant and May Factory was located in Bow, London. They later opened other match factories in the United Kingdom and Australia, such as the Bryant and May Factory, Melbourne; and owned match factories in other parts of the world. Bryant and May survived as an independent company for over seventy years, but went through a series of mergers with other match companies and later with consumer products companies. To protect its position Bryant and May merged with or took over its rivals. In 1971 the Northern Ireland factory, Maguire & Patterson closed down following a terrorist attack.. In the 1980s, factories in Gloucester and Glasgow closed too leaving Liverpool as the last match factory in the UK, until December 1994. . The registered trade name Bryant and May still exists and it is owned by Swedish Match Industries as are many of the other registered trade names of the other, formerly independent, companies within the Bryant and May group. Two French chemists, Henri Savene and Emile David Cahen, proved in 1898 that the addition of phosphorus sesquisulfide meant that the substance was not poisonous, that it could be used in a "strike-anywhere" match, and that the match heads were not explosive. British company Albright and Wilson, was the first company to produce phosphorus sesquisulfide ( Red Phosphorous) matches commercially. The company developed a safe means of making commercial quantities of phosphorus sesquisulfide in 1899 and started selling it to match manufacturers. Matches were first produced by Bryant & May in Australia in 1909. The Redhead name applies to the red striking heads of the matches which were introduced to Australia in 1946. The logo on the matchbox depicted the head and shoulder of a redheaded woman and has had four major updates since that time with a number of special issues depicting animals, birds and notable persons also producedThe Bryant & May Ltd factory in Church St Richmond is a listed building and has been converted to apartments following the closure of the Company 1980. Bryant & May's Ltd were influential in fighting against the dreadful disease known as Phossy jaw which was caused by white phosphorus used in the manufacture of the early matches. They were also the object of the 'Match Girls Strike' in London 1888, which won important improvements in working conditions and pay for the mostly female workforce working with the dangerous white phosphorus. The public were slow to purchase these safety matches because of the higher price An empty box of 'Redheads' safety matches made in Sweden for ST-Group, Springvale, Victoria, Australia c2015. The tray for the matches slides inside the open ended cover. The striking patch is on both sides of the cover. The matches have been removed. Matches were first produced by Bryant & May in Australia in 1909. The Redhead name applies to the red striking heads of the matches which were introduced to Australia in 1946. The logo on the matchbox depicted the head and shoulder of a redheaded woman and has had four major updates since that time with a number of special issues depicting animals, birds and notable persons also produced. Bryant and May ceased Australian match manufacture in the early 1980s.Top of cover ; Redheads / 45 safety / matches . Logo ; head & shoulders of a female with red hair Base of coverMade in Sweden / Redheads (R) is proudly marketed / by ST- Group Australia. / 718 Princes Highway Springvale Vic. 3171 / .............../ Readheads is a registered trademark / of Swedish Match Industries AB. / Complies ith European / Match Standard EN 1783-1997-SAF/ WARNING; / KEEP OUT OF REACH / OF CHILDREN. STRIKE / GENTLY AWAY FROM BODY . / barcode.redheads safety matches, safety matches, bryant & may pty ltd, phossy jaw disease, early settlers, moorabbin, bentleigh, cheltenham, lights, lamps, tobacco, white phosphorous, phosphorus sesquisulfide, swedish match pty ltd, pitt william, savens henri, cahen emile david , richmond victoria, match girls strike 1888, -
Eltham District Historical Society Inc
Photograph - Postcard, The Great Tokyo Earthquake on September 1st, 1923: The situation is miserable, 1923
The Great Kantō Earthquake of 1 September 1923 devastated the major cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, as well as five other surrounding prefectures and was one of the world’s worst natural disasters of the early twentieth century. In terms of loss of life and material damage, with an estimated 140,000 deaths and countless homeless, it is still Japan’s worst national disaster. Nearly 90% of the newspaper printers were destroyed in the earthquake. These postcards were not produced for aesthetics but as a major tool for the spread of information. Seeing how newspaper companies were left with their offices in shambles, postcard publishers tried to fill the gap hence some were in three languages. A very small number of publishing companies were fortunate enough to survive, one of them being Mitsumura Printing, which took advantage of its remaining resources to churn out postcards. When the Ōsaka Mainichi Shinbunsha published its bilingual three-volume photographic pictorial of the Great Kantō Earthquake just two weeks after the event, the calamity had already been captured in thousands of images that circulated on a national and international media highway. Commercial photographers and photojournalists produced the most abundant and immediate images of the quake, which were transmitted in newspapers, special-issue newspaper pictorials, commemorative photography collections, illustrated survivors’ accounts, and sets of commemorative postcards. These photographic images functioned as both news and souvenirs, rendering their consumers/viewers, inside and outside the devastated locale, into both witnesses and voyeurs. Images in the news media and those issued by respected publishing houses carried the visual authority of supposed facticity. As such they both produced and became the historical record of the event. Since the vast majority of 1923 disaster postcards that survive have no writing on them, they were likely treated more as collectibles than as a form of postal communication. Many were put into albums, creating new ways to combine images and create visual cultures of disaster for home viewing. Accordion-style albums allowed for personalized, serial organization of images that produced unique, imagistic narratives of the event. The album pages were also two-sided and could be stretched out to view a series of images on recto and verso. References: Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923 震災をイメージ化する 東京と1923年関東大震災のヴィジュアルカルチャー - The Asia. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://apjjf.org/2015/13/6/gennifer-weisenfeld/4270 The Great Kanto Earthquake: Postcards of Tragedy. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://www.tokyoweekender.com/art_and_culture/japanese-culture/the-great-kanto-earthquake-postcards/ See also: Postcards from Hell – Glimpses of the Great Kantō Earthquake; M. William STEELE (International Christian University, Japan) 14th Conference of the European Association of Japanese Studies: Visual Culture and Postcard Research Papers – East Asia Image Collection Blog. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://sites.lafayette.edu/eastasia/2014/09/01/14th-conference-of-the-european-association-of-japanese-studies-visual-culture-and-postcard-research-papers/] And https://icu.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/4503/files/ACS44_01Steele.pdfThis item, a souvenir from Japan from between the wars (circa 1923) was brought home to Research, Victoria by Bill Teagle who was serving in the Royal Australian Navy (1919-1945). Bill Teagle's sister Violet Amelda Teagle had married Theodore (Curly) Feldbauer in 1933. Bill's brother-in-law Curly was taken as a Prisoner of War by the Japanese and died at Sandakan in March 1945. The family did not learn of Curly’s death till months later and Bill's sister, Violet, herself could never forgive the Japanese for what happened to Curly. Curly is remembered on the Eltham Roll of Honour Board and his son, Albert Feldbauer (Bill’s nephew and youngest child of the children of the soldier fathers attending a school in the district), was given the honour of turning the first sod for the Eltham War Memorial Infant Welfare Centre Building. Despite this, the family maintained this cherished souvenir from a time of previous foreign friendship with Japan. The item was possibly given by Bill Teagle to his sister Margaret Rose (formerly Ingram) who later married Richard Edward (Eddie) Fielding in early 1948. (Eddie had been engaged to someone else before he went to war, but his fiancée broke it off before his return to Australia.) It was cared for by the Teagle/Fielding family for approximately one hundred years. It is of particular significance given the family's connection to the Eltham War Memorial and the significance of that memorial to the local community and represents that despite the horrors of war, former friends then foes can become friends again.tom fielding collection, japanese postcard, postcard, 1923, great kanto earthquake, japan, tokyo, yokohama -
Eltham District Historical Society Inc
Photograph - Postcard, The Great Tokyo Earthquake on September 1st, 1923: Refugee evacuation, 1923
The Great Kantō Earthquake of 1 September 1923 devastated the major cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, as well as five other surrounding prefectures and was one of the world’s worst natural disasters of the early twentieth century. In terms of loss of life and material damage, with an estimated 140,000 deaths and countless homeless, it is still Japan’s worst national disaster. Nearly 90% of the newspaper printers were destroyed in the earthquake. These postcards were not produced for aesthetics but as a major tool for the spread of information. Seeing how newspaper companies were left with their offices in shambles, postcard publishers tried to fill the gap hence some were in three languages. A very small number of publishing companies were fortunate enough to survive, one of them being Mitsumura Printing, which took advantage of its remaining resources to churn out postcards. When the Ōsaka Mainichi Shinbunsha published its bilingual three-volume photographic pictorial of the Great Kantō Earthquake just two weeks after the event, the calamity had already been captured in thousands of images that circulated on a national and international media highway. Commercial photographers and photojournalists produced the most abundant and immediate images of the quake, which were transmitted in newspapers, special-issue newspaper pictorials, commemorative photography collections, illustrated survivors’ accounts, and sets of commemorative postcards. These photographic images functioned as both news and souvenirs, rendering their consumers/viewers, inside and outside the devastated locale, into both witnesses and voyeurs. Images in the news media and those issued by respected publishing houses carried the visual authority of supposed facticity. As such they both produced and became the historical record of the event. Since the vast majority of 1923 disaster postcards that survive have no writing on them, they were likely treated more as collectibles than as a form of postal communication. Many were put into albums, creating new ways to combine images and create visual cultures of disaster for home viewing. Accordion-style albums allowed for personalized, serial organization of images that produced unique, imagistic narratives of the event. The album pages were also two-sided and could be stretched out to view a series of images on recto and verso. References: Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923 震災をイメージ化する 東京と1923年関東大震災のヴィジュアルカルチャー - The Asia. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://apjjf.org/2015/13/6/gennifer-weisenfeld/4270 The Great Kanto Earthquake: Postcards of Tragedy. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://www.tokyoweekender.com/art_and_culture/japanese-culture/the-great-kanto-earthquake-postcards/ See also: Postcards from Hell – Glimpses of the Great Kantō Earthquake; M. William STEELE (International Christian University, Japan) 14th Conference of the European Association of Japanese Studies: Visual Culture and Postcard Research Papers – East Asia Image Collection Blog. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://sites.lafayette.edu/eastasia/2014/09/01/14th-conference-of-the-european-association-of-japanese-studies-visual-culture-and-postcard-research-papers/] And https://icu.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/4503/files/ACS44_01Steele.pdfThis item, a souvenir from Japan from between the wars (circa 1923) was brought home to Research, Victoria by Bill Teagle who was serving in the Royal Australian Navy (1919-1945). Bill Teagle's sister Violet Amelda Teagle had married Theodore (Curly) Feldbauer in 1933. Bill's brother-in-law Curly was taken as a Prisoner of War by the Japanese and died at Sandakan in March 1945. The family did not learn of Curly’s death till months later and Bill's sister, Violet, herself could never forgive the Japanese for what happened to Curly. Curly is remembered on the Eltham Roll of Honour Board and his son, Albert Feldbauer (Bill’s nephew and youngest child of the children of the soldier fathers attending a school in the district), was given the honour of turning the first sod for the Eltham War Memorial Infant Welfare Centre Building. Despite this, the family maintained this cherished souvenir from a time of previous foreign friendship with Japan. The item was possibly given by Bill Teagle to his sister Margaret Rose (formerly Ingram) who later married Richard Edward (Eddie) Fielding in early 1948. (Eddie had been engaged to someone else before he went to war, but his fiancée broke it off before his return to Australia.) It was cared for by the Teagle/Fielding family for approximately one hundred years. It is of particular significance given the family's connection to the Eltham War Memorial and the significance of that memorial to the local community and represents that despite the horrors of war, former friends then foes can become friends again.tom fielding collection, japanese postcard, postcard, 1923, great kanto earthquake, japan, tokyo, yokohama -
Eltham District Historical Society Inc
Photograph - Postcard, The Great Tokyo Earthquake on September 1st, 1923: Azuma Bridge, Tokyo, 1923
The Great Kantō Earthquake of 1 September 1923 devastated the major cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, as well as five other surrounding prefectures and was one of the world’s worst natural disasters of the early twentieth century. In terms of loss of life and material damage, with an estimated 140,000 deaths and countless homeless, it is still Japan’s worst national disaster. Nearly 90% of the newspaper printers were destroyed in the earthquake. These postcards were not produced for aesthetics but as a major tool for the spread of information. Seeing how newspaper companies were left with their offices in shambles, postcard publishers tried to fill the gap hence some were in three languages. A very small number of publishing companies were fortunate enough to survive, one of them being Mitsumura Printing, which took advantage of its remaining resources to churn out postcards. When the Ōsaka Mainichi Shinbunsha published its bilingual three-volume photographic pictorial of the Great Kantō Earthquake just two weeks after the event, the calamity had already been captured in thousands of images that circulated on a national and international media highway. Commercial photographers and photojournalists produced the most abundant and immediate images of the quake, which were transmitted in newspapers, special-issue newspaper pictorials, commemorative photography collections, illustrated survivors’ accounts, and sets of commemorative postcards. These photographic images functioned as both news and souvenirs, rendering their consumers/viewers, inside and outside the devastated locale, into both witnesses and voyeurs. Images in the news media and those issued by respected publishing houses carried the visual authority of supposed facticity. As such they both produced and became the historical record of the event. Since the vast majority of 1923 disaster postcards that survive have no writing on them, they were likely treated more as collectibles than as a form of postal communication. Many were put into albums, creating new ways to combine images and create visual cultures of disaster for home viewing. Accordion-style albums allowed for personalized, serial organization of images that produced unique, imagistic narratives of the event. The album pages were also two-sided and could be stretched out to view a series of images on recto and verso. References: Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923 震災をイメージ化する 東京と1923年関東大震災のヴィジュアルカルチャー - The Asia. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://apjjf.org/2015/13/6/gennifer-weisenfeld/4270 The Great Kanto Earthquake: Postcards of Tragedy. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://www.tokyoweekender.com/art_and_culture/japanese-culture/the-great-kanto-earthquake-postcards/ See also: Postcards from Hell – Glimpses of the Great Kantō Earthquake; M. William STEELE (International Christian University, Japan) 14th Conference of the European Association of Japanese Studies: Visual Culture and Postcard Research Papers – East Asia Image Collection Blog. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://sites.lafayette.edu/eastasia/2014/09/01/14th-conference-of-the-european-association-of-japanese-studies-visual-culture-and-postcard-research-papers/] And https://icu.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/4503/files/ACS44_01Steele.pdfThis item, a souvenir from Japan from between the wars (circa 1923) was brought home to Research, Victoria by Bill Teagle who was serving in the Royal Australian Navy (1919-1945). Bill Teagle's sister Violet Amelda Teagle had married Theodore (Curly) Feldbauer in 1933. Bill's brother-in-law Curly was taken as a Prisoner of War by the Japanese and died at Sandakan in March 1945. The family did not learn of Curly’s death till months later and Bill's sister, Violet, herself could never forgive the Japanese for what happened to Curly. Curly is remembered on the Eltham Roll of Honour Board and his son, Albert Feldbauer (Bill’s nephew and youngest child of the children of the soldier fathers attending a school in the district), was given the honour of turning the first sod for the Eltham War Memorial Infant Welfare Centre Building. Despite this, the family maintained this cherished souvenir from a time of previous foreign friendship with Japan. The item was possibly given by Bill Teagle to his sister Margaret Rose (formerly Ingram) who later married Richard Edward (Eddie) Fielding in early 1948. (Eddie had been engaged to someone else before he went to war, but his fiancée broke it off before his return to Australia.) It was cared for by the Teagle/Fielding family for approximately one hundred years. It is of particular significance given the family's connection to the Eltham War Memorial and the significance of that memorial to the local community and represents that despite the horrors of war, former friends then foes can become friends again.tom fielding collection, japanese postcard, postcard, 1923, great kanto earthquake, japan, tokyo, yokohama -
Eltham District Historical Society Inc
Photograph - Postcard, The Great Tokyo Earthquake on September 1st, 1923: Mitsukoshi Department Store, Tokyo, 1923
The Great Kantō Earthquake of 1 September 1923 devastated the major cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, as well as five other surrounding prefectures and was one of the world’s worst natural disasters of the early twentieth century. In terms of loss of life and material damage, with an estimated 140,000 deaths and countless homeless, it is still Japan’s worst national disaster. Nearly 90% of the newspaper printers were destroyed in the earthquake. These postcards were not produced for aesthetics but as a major tool for the spread of information. Seeing how newspaper companies were left with their offices in shambles, postcard publishers tried to fill the gap hence some were in three languages. A very small number of publishing companies were fortunate enough to survive, one of them being Mitsumura Printing, which took advantage of its remaining resources to churn out postcards. When the Ōsaka Mainichi Shinbunsha published its bilingual three-volume photographic pictorial of the Great Kantō Earthquake just two weeks after the event, the calamity had already been captured in thousands of images that circulated on a national and international media highway. Commercial photographers and photojournalists produced the most abundant and immediate images of the quake, which were transmitted in newspapers, special-issue newspaper pictorials, commemorative photography collections, illustrated survivors’ accounts, and sets of commemorative postcards. These photographic images functioned as both news and souvenirs, rendering their consumers/viewers, inside and outside the devastated locale, into both witnesses and voyeurs. Images in the news media and those issued by respected publishing houses carried the visual authority of supposed facticity. As such they both produced and became the historical record of the event. Since the vast majority of 1923 disaster postcards that survive have no writing on them, they were likely treated more as collectibles than as a form of postal communication. Many were put into albums, creating new ways to combine images and create visual cultures of disaster for home viewing. Accordion-style albums allowed for personalized, serial organization of images that produced unique, imagistic narratives of the event. The album pages were also two-sided and could be stretched out to view a series of images on recto and verso. References: Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923 震災をイメージ化する 東京と1923年関東大震災のヴィジュアルカルチャー - The Asia. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://apjjf.org/2015/13/6/gennifer-weisenfeld/4270 The Great Kanto Earthquake: Postcards of Tragedy. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://www.tokyoweekender.com/art_and_culture/japanese-culture/the-great-kanto-earthquake-postcards/ See also: Postcards from Hell – Glimpses of the Great Kantō Earthquake; M. William STEELE (International Christian University, Japan) 14th Conference of the European Association of Japanese Studies: Visual Culture and Postcard Research Papers – East Asia Image Collection Blog. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://sites.lafayette.edu/eastasia/2014/09/01/14th-conference-of-the-european-association-of-japanese-studies-visual-culture-and-postcard-research-papers/] And https://icu.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/4503/files/ACS44_01Steele.pdfThis item, a souvenir from Japan from between the wars (circa 1923) was brought home to Research, Victoria by Bill Teagle who was serving in the Royal Australian Navy (1919-1945). Bill Teagle's sister Violet Amelda Teagle had married Theodore (Curly) Feldbauer in 1933. Bill's brother-in-law Curly was taken as a Prisoner of War by the Japanese and died at Sandakan in March 1945. The family did not learn of Curly’s death till months later and Bill's sister, Violet, herself could never forgive the Japanese for what happened to Curly. Curly is remembered on the Eltham Roll of Honour Board and his son, Albert Feldbauer (Bill’s nephew and youngest child of the children of the soldier fathers attending a school in the district), was given the honour of turning the first sod for the Eltham War Memorial Infant Welfare Centre Building. Despite this, the family maintained this cherished souvenir from a time of previous foreign friendship with Japan. The item was possibly given by Bill Teagle to his sister Margaret Rose (formerly Ingram) who later married Richard Edward (Eddie) Fielding in early 1948. (Eddie had been engaged to someone else before he went to war, but his fiancée broke it off before his return to Australia.) It was cared for by the Teagle/Fielding family for approximately one hundred years. It is of particular significance given the family's connection to the Eltham War Memorial and the significance of that memorial to the local community and represents that despite the horrors of war, former friends then foes can become friends again.tom fielding collection, japanese postcard, postcard, 1923, great kanto earthquake, japan, tokyo, yokohama -
Eltham District Historical Society Inc
Photograph - Postcard, The Great Tokyo Earthquake on September 1st, 1923: Shirokiya Department Store, Tokyo, 1923
The Great Kantō Earthquake of 1 September 1923 devastated the major cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, as well as five other surrounding prefectures and was one of the world’s worst natural disasters of the early twentieth century. In terms of loss of life and material damage, with an estimated 140,000 deaths and countless homeless, it is still Japan’s worst national disaster. Nearly 90% of the newspaper printers were destroyed in the earthquake. These postcards were not produced for aesthetics but as a major tool for the spread of information. Seeing how newspaper companies were left with their offices in shambles, postcard publishers tried to fill the gap hence some were in three languages. A very small number of publishing companies were fortunate enough to survive, one of them being Mitsumura Printing, which took advantage of its remaining resources to churn out postcards. When the Ōsaka Mainichi Shinbunsha published its bilingual three-volume photographic pictorial of the Great Kantō Earthquake just two weeks after the event, the calamity had already been captured in thousands of images that circulated on a national and international media highway. Commercial photographers and photojournalists produced the most abundant and immediate images of the quake, which were transmitted in newspapers, special-issue newspaper pictorials, commemorative photography collections, illustrated survivors’ accounts, and sets of commemorative postcards. These photographic images functioned as both news and souvenirs, rendering their consumers/viewers, inside and outside the devastated locale, into both witnesses and voyeurs. Images in the news media and those issued by respected publishing houses carried the visual authority of supposed facticity. As such they both produced and became the historical record of the event. Since the vast majority of 1923 disaster postcards that survive have no writing on them, they were likely treated more as collectibles than as a form of postal communication. Many were put into albums, creating new ways to combine images and create visual cultures of disaster for home viewing. Accordion-style albums allowed for personalized, serial organization of images that produced unique, imagistic narratives of the event. The album pages were also two-sided and could be stretched out to view a series of images on recto and verso. References: Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923 震災をイメージ化する 東京と1923年関東大震災のヴィジュアルカルチャー - The Asia. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://apjjf.org/2015/13/6/gennifer-weisenfeld/4270 The Great Kanto Earthquake: Postcards of Tragedy. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://www.tokyoweekender.com/art_and_culture/japanese-culture/the-great-kanto-earthquake-postcards/ See also: Postcards from Hell – Glimpses of the Great Kantō Earthquake; M. William STEELE (International Christian University, Japan) 14th Conference of the European Association of Japanese Studies: Visual Culture and Postcard Research Papers – East Asia Image Collection Blog. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://sites.lafayette.edu/eastasia/2014/09/01/14th-conference-of-the-european-association-of-japanese-studies-visual-culture-and-postcard-research-papers/] And https://icu.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/4503/files/ACS44_01Steele.pdfThis item, a souvenir from Japan from between the wars (circa 1923) was brought home to Research, Victoria by Bill Teagle who was serving in the Royal Australian Navy (1919-1945). Bill Teagle's sister Violet Amelda Teagle had married Theodore (Curly) Feldbauer in 1933. Bill's brother-in-law Curly was taken as a Prisoner of War by the Japanese and died at Sandakan in March 1945. The family did not learn of Curly’s death till months later and Bill's sister, Violet, herself could never forgive the Japanese for what happened to Curly. Curly is remembered on the Eltham Roll of Honour Board and his son, Albert Feldbauer (Bill’s nephew and youngest child of the children of the soldier fathers attending a school in the district), was given the honour of turning the first sod for the Eltham War Memorial Infant Welfare Centre Building. Despite this, the family maintained this cherished souvenir from a time of previous foreign friendship with Japan. The item was possibly given by Bill Teagle to his sister Margaret Rose (formerly Ingram) who later married Richard Edward (Eddie) Fielding in early 1948. (Eddie had been engaged to someone else before he went to war, but his fiancée broke it off before his return to Australia.) It was cared for by the Teagle/Fielding family for approximately one hundred years. It is of particular significance given the family's connection to the Eltham War Memorial and the significance of that memorial to the local community and represents that despite the horrors of war, former friends then foes can become friends again.tom fielding collection, japanese postcard, postcard, 1923, great kanto earthquake, japan, tokyo, yokohama -
Eltham District Historical Society Inc
Photograph - Postcard, The Great Tokyo Earthquake on September 1st, 1923: Kudan Sakashita, Tokyo, 1923
The Great Kantō Earthquake of 1 September 1923 devastated the major cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, as well as five other surrounding prefectures and was one of the world’s worst natural disasters of the early twentieth century. In terms of loss of life and material damage, with an estimated 140,000 deaths and countless homeless, it is still Japan’s worst national disaster. Nearly 90% of the newspaper printers were destroyed in the earthquake. These postcards were not produced for aesthetics but as a major tool for the spread of information. Seeing how newspaper companies were left with their offices in shambles, postcard publishers tried to fill the gap hence some were in three languages. A very small number of publishing companies were fortunate enough to survive, one of them being Mitsumura Printing, which took advantage of its remaining resources to churn out postcards. When the Ōsaka Mainichi Shinbunsha published its bilingual three-volume photographic pictorial of the Great Kantō Earthquake just two weeks after the event, the calamity had already been captured in thousands of images that circulated on a national and international media highway. Commercial photographers and photojournalists produced the most abundant and immediate images of the quake, which were transmitted in newspapers, special-issue newspaper pictorials, commemorative photography collections, illustrated survivors’ accounts, and sets of commemorative postcards. These photographic images functioned as both news and souvenirs, rendering their consumers/viewers, inside and outside the devastated locale, into both witnesses and voyeurs. Images in the news media and those issued by respected publishing houses carried the visual authority of supposed facticity. As such they both produced and became the historical record of the event. Since the vast majority of 1923 disaster postcards that survive have no writing on them, they were likely treated more as collectibles than as a form of postal communication. Many were put into albums, creating new ways to combine images and create visual cultures of disaster for home viewing. Accordion-style albums allowed for personalized, serial organization of images that produced unique, imagistic narratives of the event. The album pages were also two-sided and could be stretched out to view a series of images on recto and verso. References: Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923 震災をイメージ化する 東京と1923年関東大震災のヴィジュアルカルチャー - The Asia. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://apjjf.org/2015/13/6/gennifer-weisenfeld/4270 The Great Kanto Earthquake: Postcards of Tragedy. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://www.tokyoweekender.com/art_and_culture/japanese-culture/the-great-kanto-earthquake-postcards/ See also: Postcards from Hell – Glimpses of the Great Kantō Earthquake; M. William STEELE (International Christian University, Japan) 14th Conference of the European Association of Japanese Studies: Visual Culture and Postcard Research Papers – East Asia Image Collection Blog. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://sites.lafayette.edu/eastasia/2014/09/01/14th-conference-of-the-european-association-of-japanese-studies-visual-culture-and-postcard-research-papers/] And https://icu.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/4503/files/ACS44_01Steele.pdfThis item, a souvenir from Japan from between the wars (circa 1923) was brought home to Research, Victoria by Bill Teagle who was serving in the Royal Australian Navy (1919-1945). Bill Teagle's sister Violet Amelda Teagle had married Theodore (Curly) Feldbauer in 1933. Bill's brother-in-law Curly was taken as a Prisoner of War by the Japanese and died at Sandakan in March 1945. The family did not learn of Curly’s death till months later and Bill's sister, Violet, herself could never forgive the Japanese for what happened to Curly. Curly is remembered on the Eltham Roll of Honour Board and his son, Albert Feldbauer (Bill’s nephew and youngest child of the children of the soldier fathers attending a school in the district), was given the honour of turning the first sod for the Eltham War Memorial Infant Welfare Centre Building. Despite this, the family maintained this cherished souvenir from a time of previous foreign friendship with Japan. The item was possibly given by Bill Teagle to his sister Margaret Rose (formerly Ingram) who later married Richard Edward (Eddie) Fielding in early 1948. (Eddie had been engaged to someone else before he went to war, but his fiancée broke it off before his return to Australia.) It was cared for by the Teagle/Fielding family for approximately one hundred years. It is of particular significance given the family's connection to the Eltham War Memorial and the significance of that memorial to the local community and represents that despite the horrors of war, former friends then foes can become friends again.tom fielding collection, japanese postcard, postcard, 1923, great kanto earthquake, japan, tokyo, yokohama -
Eltham District Historical Society Inc
Photograph - Postcard, The Great Tokyo Earthquake on September 1st, 1923: The Department of Home Affairs, Tokyo, 1923
The Great Kantō Earthquake of 1 September 1923 devastated the major cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, as well as five other surrounding prefectures and was one of the world’s worst natural disasters of the early twentieth century. In terms of loss of life and material damage, with an estimated 140,000 deaths and countless homeless, it is still Japan’s worst national disaster. Nearly 90% of the newspaper printers were destroyed in the earthquake. These postcards were not produced for aesthetics but as a major tool for the spread of information. Seeing how newspaper companies were left with their offices in shambles, postcard publishers tried to fill the gap hence some were in three languages. A very small number of publishing companies were fortunate enough to survive, one of them being Mitsumura Printing, which took advantage of its remaining resources to churn out postcards. When the Ōsaka Mainichi Shinbunsha published its bilingual three-volume photographic pictorial of the Great Kantō Earthquake just two weeks after the event, the calamity had already been captured in thousands of images that circulated on a national and international media highway. Commercial photographers and photojournalists produced the most abundant and immediate images of the quake, which were transmitted in newspapers, special-issue newspaper pictorials, commemorative photography collections, illustrated survivors’ accounts, and sets of commemorative postcards. These photographic images functioned as both news and souvenirs, rendering their consumers/viewers, inside and outside the devastated locale, into both witnesses and voyeurs. Images in the news media and those issued by respected publishing houses carried the visual authority of supposed facticity. As such they both produced and became the historical record of the event. Since the vast majority of 1923 disaster postcards that survive have no writing on them, they were likely treated more as collectibles than as a form of postal communication. Many were put into albums, creating new ways to combine images and create visual cultures of disaster for home viewing. Accordion-style albums allowed for personalized, serial organization of images that produced unique, imagistic narratives of the event. The album pages were also two-sided and could be stretched out to view a series of images on recto and verso. References: Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923 震災をイメージ化する 東京と1923年関東大震災のヴィジュアルカルチャー - The Asia. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://apjjf.org/2015/13/6/gennifer-weisenfeld/4270 The Great Kanto Earthquake: Postcards of Tragedy. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://www.tokyoweekender.com/art_and_culture/japanese-culture/the-great-kanto-earthquake-postcards/ See also: Postcards from Hell – Glimpses of the Great Kantō Earthquake; M. William STEELE (International Christian University, Japan) 14th Conference of the European Association of Japanese Studies: Visual Culture and Postcard Research Papers – East Asia Image Collection Blog. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://sites.lafayette.edu/eastasia/2014/09/01/14th-conference-of-the-european-association-of-japanese-studies-visual-culture-and-postcard-research-papers/] And https://icu.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/4503/files/ACS44_01Steele.pdfThis item, a souvenir from Japan from between the wars (circa 1923) was brought home to Research, Victoria by Bill Teagle who was serving in the Royal Australian Navy (1919-1945). Bill Teagle's sister Violet Amelda Teagle had married Theodore (Curly) Feldbauer in 1933. Bill's brother-in-law Curly was taken as a Prisoner of War by the Japanese and died at Sandakan in March 1945. The family did not learn of Curly’s death till months later and Bill's sister, Violet, herself could never forgive the Japanese for what happened to Curly. Curly is remembered on the Eltham Roll of Honour Board and his son, Albert Feldbauer (Bill’s nephew and youngest child of the children of the soldier fathers attending a school in the district), was given the honour of turning the first sod for the Eltham War Memorial Infant Welfare Centre Building. Despite this, the family maintained this cherished souvenir from a time of previous foreign friendship with Japan. The item was possibly given by Bill Teagle to his sister Margaret Rose (formerly Ingram) who later married Richard Edward (Eddie) Fielding in early 1948. (Eddie had been engaged to someone else before he went to war, but his fiancée broke it off before his return to Australia.) It was cared for by the Teagle/Fielding family for approximately one hundred years. It is of particular significance given the family's connection to the Eltham War Memorial and the significance of that memorial to the local community and represents that despite the horrors of war, former friends then foes can become friends again.tom fielding collection, japanese postcard, postcard, 1923, great kanto earthquake, japan, tokyo, yokohama -
Eltham District Historical Society Inc
Photograph - Postcard, The Great Tokyo Earthquake on September 1st, 1923: Looking over Asakusa and Shitaya from Ueno Park, Tokyo, 1923
The Great Kantō Earthquake of 1 September 1923 devastated the major cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, as well as five other surrounding prefectures and was one of the world’s worst natural disasters of the early twentieth century. In terms of loss of life and material damage, with an estimated 140,000 deaths and countless homeless, it is still Japan’s worst national disaster. Nearly 90% of the newspaper printers were destroyed in the earthquake. These postcards were not produced for aesthetics but as a major tool for the spread of information. Seeing how newspaper companies were left with their offices in shambles, postcard publishers tried to fill the gap hence some were in three languages. A very small number of publishing companies were fortunate enough to survive, one of them being Mitsumura Printing, which took advantage of its remaining resources to churn out postcards. When the Ōsaka Mainichi Shinbunsha published its bilingual three-volume photographic pictorial of the Great Kantō Earthquake just two weeks after the event, the calamity had already been captured in thousands of images that circulated on a national and international media highway. Commercial photographers and photojournalists produced the most abundant and immediate images of the quake, which were transmitted in newspapers, special-issue newspaper pictorials, commemorative photography collections, illustrated survivors’ accounts, and sets of commemorative postcards. These photographic images functioned as both news and souvenirs, rendering their consumers/viewers, inside and outside the devastated locale, into both witnesses and voyeurs. Images in the news media and those issued by respected publishing houses carried the visual authority of supposed facticity. As such they both produced and became the historical record of the event. Since the vast majority of 1923 disaster postcards that survive have no writing on them, they were likely treated more as collectibles than as a form of postal communication. Many were put into albums, creating new ways to combine images and create visual cultures of disaster for home viewing. Accordion-style albums allowed for personalized, serial organization of images that produced unique, imagistic narratives of the event. The album pages were also two-sided and could be stretched out to view a series of images on recto and verso. References: Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923 震災をイメージ化する 東京と1923年関東大震災のヴィジュアルカルチャー - The Asia. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://apjjf.org/2015/13/6/gennifer-weisenfeld/4270 The Great Kanto Earthquake: Postcards of Tragedy. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://www.tokyoweekender.com/art_and_culture/japanese-culture/the-great-kanto-earthquake-postcards/ See also: Postcards from Hell – Glimpses of the Great Kantō Earthquake; M. William STEELE (International Christian University, Japan) 14th Conference of the European Association of Japanese Studies: Visual Culture and Postcard Research Papers – East Asia Image Collection Blog. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://sites.lafayette.edu/eastasia/2014/09/01/14th-conference-of-the-european-association-of-japanese-studies-visual-culture-and-postcard-research-papers/] And https://icu.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/4503/files/ACS44_01Steele.pdfThis item, a souvenir from Japan from between the wars (circa 1923) was brought home to Research, Victoria by Bill Teagle who was serving in the Royal Australian Navy (1919-1945). Bill Teagle's sister Violet Amelda Teagle had married Theodore (Curly) Feldbauer in 1933. Bill's brother-in-law Curly was taken as a Prisoner of War by the Japanese and died at Sandakan in March 1945. The family did not learn of Curly’s death till months later and Bill's sister, Violet, herself could never forgive the Japanese for what happened to Curly. Curly is remembered on the Eltham Roll of Honour Board and his son, Albert Feldbauer (Bill’s nephew and youngest child of the children of the soldier fathers attending a school in the district), was given the honour of turning the first sod for the Eltham War Memorial Infant Welfare Centre Building. Despite this, the family maintained this cherished souvenir from a time of previous foreign friendship with Japan. The item was possibly given by Bill Teagle to his sister Margaret Rose (formerly Ingram) who later married Richard Edward (Eddie) Fielding in early 1948. (Eddie had been engaged to someone else before he went to war, but his fiancée broke it off before his return to Australia.) It was cared for by the Teagle/Fielding family for approximately one hundred years. It is of particular significance given the family's connection to the Eltham War Memorial and the significance of that memorial to the local community and represents that despite the horrors of war, former friends then foes can become friends again.tom fielding collection, japanese postcard, postcard, 1923, great kanto earthquake, japan, tokyo, yokohama -
Eltham District Historical Society Inc
Photograph - Postcard, The Great Tokyo Earthquake on September 1st, 1923: Fukagawa Manufacturing District, Tokyo, 1923
The Great Kantō Earthquake of 1 September 1923 devastated the major cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, as well as five other surrounding prefectures and was one of the world’s worst natural disasters of the early twentieth century. In terms of loss of life and material damage, with an estimated 140,000 deaths and countless homeless, it is still Japan’s worst national disaster. Nearly 90% of the newspaper printers were destroyed in the earthquake. These postcards were not produced for aesthetics but as a major tool for the spread of information. Seeing how newspaper companies were left with their offices in shambles, postcard publishers tried to fill the gap hence some were in three languages. A very small number of publishing companies were fortunate enough to survive, one of them being Mitsumura Printing, which took advantage of its remaining resources to churn out postcards. When the Ōsaka Mainichi Shinbunsha published its bilingual three-volume photographic pictorial of the Great Kantō Earthquake just two weeks after the event, the calamity had already been captured in thousands of images that circulated on a national and international media highway. Commercial photographers and photojournalists produced the most abundant and immediate images of the quake, which were transmitted in newspapers, special-issue newspaper pictorials, commemorative photography collections, illustrated survivors’ accounts, and sets of commemorative postcards. These photographic images functioned as both news and souvenirs, rendering their consumers/viewers, inside and outside the devastated locale, into both witnesses and voyeurs. Images in the news media and those issued by respected publishing houses carried the visual authority of supposed facticity. As such they both produced and became the historical record of the event. Since the vast majority of 1923 disaster postcards that survive have no writing on them, they were likely treated more as collectibles than as a form of postal communication. Many were put into albums, creating new ways to combine images and create visual cultures of disaster for home viewing. Accordion-style albums allowed for personalized, serial organization of images that produced unique, imagistic narratives of the event. The album pages were also two-sided and could be stretched out to view a series of images on recto and verso. References: Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923 震災をイメージ化する 東京と1923年関東大震災のヴィジュアルカルチャー - The Asia. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://apjjf.org/2015/13/6/gennifer-weisenfeld/4270 The Great Kanto Earthquake: Postcards of Tragedy. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://www.tokyoweekender.com/art_and_culture/japanese-culture/the-great-kanto-earthquake-postcards/ See also: Postcards from Hell – Glimpses of the Great Kantō Earthquake; M. William STEELE (International Christian University, Japan) 14th Conference of the European Association of Japanese Studies: Visual Culture and Postcard Research Papers – East Asia Image Collection Blog. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://sites.lafayette.edu/eastasia/2014/09/01/14th-conference-of-the-european-association-of-japanese-studies-visual-culture-and-postcard-research-papers/] And https://icu.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/4503/files/ACS44_01Steele.pdfThis item, a souvenir from Japan from between the wars (circa 1923) was brought home to Research, Victoria by Bill Teagle who was serving in the Royal Australian Navy (1919-1945). Bill Teagle's sister Violet Amelda Teagle had married Theodore (Curly) Feldbauer in 1933. Bill's brother-in-law Curly was taken as a Prisoner of War by the Japanese and died at Sandakan in March 1945. The family did not learn of Curly’s death till months later and Bill's sister, Violet, herself could never forgive the Japanese for what happened to Curly. Curly is remembered on the Eltham Roll of Honour Board and his son, Albert Feldbauer (Bill’s nephew and youngest child of the children of the soldier fathers attending a school in the district), was given the honour of turning the first sod for the Eltham War Memorial Infant Welfare Centre Building. Despite this, the family maintained this cherished souvenir from a time of previous foreign friendship with Japan. The item was possibly given by Bill Teagle to his sister Margaret Rose (formerly Ingram) who later married Richard Edward (Eddie) Fielding in early 1948. (Eddie had been engaged to someone else before he went to war, but his fiancée broke it off before his return to Australia.) It was cared for by the Teagle/Fielding family for approximately one hundred years. It is of particular significance given the family's connection to the Eltham War Memorial and the significance of that memorial to the local community and represents that despite the horrors of war, former friends then foes can become friends again.tom fielding collection, japanese postcard, postcard, 1923, great kanto earthquake, japan, tokyo, yokohama -
Eltham District Historical Society Inc
Photograph - Postcard, The Great Tokyo Earthquake on September 1st, 1923: Kuramai Street, Tokyo, 1923
The Great Kantō Earthquake of 1 September 1923 devastated the major cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, as well as five other surrounding prefectures and was one of the world’s worst natural disasters of the early twentieth century. In terms of loss of life and material damage, with an estimated 140,000 deaths and countless homeless, it is still Japan’s worst national disaster. Nearly 90% of the newspaper printers were destroyed in the earthquake. These postcards were not produced for aesthetics but as a major tool for the spread of information. Seeing how newspaper companies were left with their offices in shambles, postcard publishers tried to fill the gap hence some were in three languages. A very small number of publishing companies were fortunate enough to survive, one of them being Mitsumura Printing, which took advantage of its remaining resources to churn out postcards. When the Ōsaka Mainichi Shinbunsha published its bilingual three-volume photographic pictorial of the Great Kantō Earthquake just two weeks after the event, the calamity had already been captured in thousands of images that circulated on a national and international media highway. Commercial photographers and photojournalists produced the most abundant and immediate images of the quake, which were transmitted in newspapers, special-issue newspaper pictorials, commemorative photography collections, illustrated survivors’ accounts, and sets of commemorative postcards. These photographic images functioned as both news and souvenirs, rendering their consumers/viewers, inside and outside the devastated locale, into both witnesses and voyeurs. Images in the news media and those issued by respected publishing houses carried the visual authority of supposed facticity. As such they both produced and became the historical record of the event. Since the vast majority of 1923 disaster postcards that survive have no writing on them, they were likely treated more as collectibles than as a form of postal communication. Many were put into albums, creating new ways to combine images and create visual cultures of disaster for home viewing. Accordion-style albums allowed for personalized, serial organization of images that produced unique, imagistic narratives of the event. The album pages were also two-sided and could be stretched out to view a series of images on recto and verso. References: Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923 震災をイメージ化する 東京と1923年関東大震災のヴィジュアルカルチャー - The Asia. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://apjjf.org/2015/13/6/gennifer-weisenfeld/4270 The Great Kanto Earthquake: Postcards of Tragedy. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://www.tokyoweekender.com/art_and_culture/japanese-culture/the-great-kanto-earthquake-postcards/ See also: Postcards from Hell – Glimpses of the Great Kantō Earthquake; M. William STEELE (International Christian University, Japan) 14th Conference of the European Association of Japanese Studies: Visual Culture and Postcard Research Papers – East Asia Image Collection Blog. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://sites.lafayette.edu/eastasia/2014/09/01/14th-conference-of-the-european-association-of-japanese-studies-visual-culture-and-postcard-research-papers/] And https://icu.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/4503/files/ACS44_01Steele.pdfThis item, a souvenir from Japan from between the wars (circa 1923) was brought home to Research, Victoria by Bill Teagle who was serving in the Royal Australian Navy (1919-1945). Bill Teagle's sister Violet Amelda Teagle had married Theodore (Curly) Feldbauer in 1933. Bill's brother-in-law Curly was taken as a Prisoner of War by the Japanese and died at Sandakan in March 1945. The family did not learn of Curly’s death till months later and Bill's sister, Violet, herself could never forgive the Japanese for what happened to Curly. Curly is remembered on the Eltham Roll of Honour Board and his son, Albert Feldbauer (Bill’s nephew and youngest child of the children of the soldier fathers attending a school in the district), was given the honour of turning the first sod for the Eltham War Memorial Infant Welfare Centre Building. Despite this, the family maintained this cherished souvenir from a time of previous foreign friendship with Japan. The item was possibly given by Bill Teagle to his sister Margaret Rose (formerly Ingram) who later married Richard Edward (Eddie) Fielding in early 1948. (Eddie had been engaged to someone else before he went to war, but his fiancée broke it off before his return to Australia.) It was cared for by the Teagle/Fielding family for approximately one hundred years. It is of particular significance given the family's connection to the Eltham War Memorial and the significance of that memorial to the local community and represents that despite the horrors of war, former friends then foes can become friends again.tom fielding collection, japanese postcard, postcard, 1923, great kanto earthquake, japan, tokyo, yokohama -
Eltham District Historical Society Inc
Photograph - Postcard, The Great Tokyo Earthquake on September 1st, 1923: Ginza Street, from South Tokyo, 1923
The Great Kantō Earthquake of 1 September 1923 devastated the major cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, as well as five other surrounding prefectures and was one of the world’s worst natural disasters of the early twentieth century. In terms of loss of life and material damage, with an estimated 140,000 deaths and countless homeless, it is still Japan’s worst national disaster. Nearly 90% of the newspaper printers were destroyed in the earthquake. These postcards were not produced for aesthetics but as a major tool for the spread of information. Seeing how newspaper companies were left with their offices in shambles, postcard publishers tried to fill the gap hence some were in three languages. A very small number of publishing companies were fortunate enough to survive, one of them being Mitsumura Printing, which took advantage of its remaining resources to churn out postcards. When the Ōsaka Mainichi Shinbunsha published its bilingual three-volume photographic pictorial of the Great Kantō Earthquake just two weeks after the event, the calamity had already been captured in thousands of images that circulated on a national and international media highway. Commercial photographers and photojournalists produced the most abundant and immediate images of the quake, which were transmitted in newspapers, special-issue newspaper pictorials, commemorative photography collections, illustrated survivors’ accounts, and sets of commemorative postcards. These photographic images functioned as both news and souvenirs, rendering their consumers/viewers, inside and outside the devastated locale, into both witnesses and voyeurs. Images in the news media and those issued by respected publishing houses carried the visual authority of supposed facticity. As such they both produced and became the historical record of the event. Since the vast majority of 1923 disaster postcards that survive have no writing on them, they were likely treated more as collectibles than as a form of postal communication. Many were put into albums, creating new ways to combine images and create visual cultures of disaster for home viewing. Accordion-style albums allowed for personalized, serial organization of images that produced unique, imagistic narratives of the event. The album pages were also two-sided and could be stretched out to view a series of images on recto and verso. References: Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923 震災をイメージ化する 東京と1923年関東大震災のヴィジュアルカルチャー - The Asia. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://apjjf.org/2015/13/6/gennifer-weisenfeld/4270 The Great Kanto Earthquake: Postcards of Tragedy. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://www.tokyoweekender.com/art_and_culture/japanese-culture/the-great-kanto-earthquake-postcards/ See also: Postcards from Hell – Glimpses of the Great Kantō Earthquake; M. William STEELE (International Christian University, Japan) 14th Conference of the European Association of Japanese Studies: Visual Culture and Postcard Research Papers – East Asia Image Collection Blog. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://sites.lafayette.edu/eastasia/2014/09/01/14th-conference-of-the-european-association-of-japanese-studies-visual-culture-and-postcard-research-papers/] And https://icu.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/4503/files/ACS44_01Steele.pdfThis item, a souvenir from Japan from between the wars (circa 1923) was brought home to Research, Victoria by Bill Teagle who was serving in the Royal Australian Navy (1919-1945). Bill Teagle's sister Violet Amelda Teagle had married Theodore (Curly) Feldbauer in 1933. Bill's brother-in-law Curly was taken as a Prisoner of War by the Japanese and died at Sandakan in March 1945. The family did not learn of Curly’s death till months later and Bill's sister, Violet, herself could never forgive the Japanese for what happened to Curly. Curly is remembered on the Eltham Roll of Honour Board and his son, Albert Feldbauer (Bill’s nephew and youngest child of the children of the soldier fathers attending a school in the district), was given the honour of turning the first sod for the Eltham War Memorial Infant Welfare Centre Building. Despite this, the family maintained this cherished souvenir from a time of previous foreign friendship with Japan. The item was possibly given by Bill Teagle to his sister Margaret Rose (formerly Ingram) who later married Richard Edward (Eddie) Fielding in early 1948. (Eddie had been engaged to someone else before he went to war, but his fiancée broke it off before his return to Australia.) It was cared for by the Teagle/Fielding family for approximately one hundred years. It is of particular significance given the family's connection to the Eltham War Memorial and the significance of that memorial to the local community and represents that despite the horrors of war, former friends then foes can become friends again.tom fielding collection, japanese postcard, postcard, 1923, great kanto earthquake, japan, tokyo, yokohama -
Eltham District Historical Society Inc
Photograph - Postcard, The Great Tokyo Earthquake on September 1st, 1923: Shinbashi Station, Tokyo, 1923
The Great Kantō Earthquake of 1 September 1923 devastated the major cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, as well as five other surrounding prefectures and was one of the world’s worst natural disasters of the early twentieth century. In terms of loss of life and material damage, with an estimated 140,000 deaths and countless homeless, it is still Japan’s worst national disaster. Nearly 90% of the newspaper printers were destroyed in the earthquake. These postcards were not produced for aesthetics but as a major tool for the spread of information. Seeing how newspaper companies were left with their offices in shambles, postcard publishers tried to fill the gap hence some were in three languages. A very small number of publishing companies were fortunate enough to survive, one of them being Mitsumura Printing, which took advantage of its remaining resources to churn out postcards. When the Ōsaka Mainichi Shinbunsha published its bilingual three-volume photographic pictorial of the Great Kantō Earthquake just two weeks after the event, the calamity had already been captured in thousands of images that circulated on a national and international media highway. Commercial photographers and photojournalists produced the most abundant and immediate images of the quake, which were transmitted in newspapers, special-issue newspaper pictorials, commemorative photography collections, illustrated survivors’ accounts, and sets of commemorative postcards. These photographic images functioned as both news and souvenirs, rendering their consumers/viewers, inside and outside the devastated locale, into both witnesses and voyeurs. Images in the news media and those issued by respected publishing houses carried the visual authority of supposed facticity. As such they both produced and became the historical record of the event. Since the vast majority of 1923 disaster postcards that survive have no writing on them, they were likely treated more as collectibles than as a form of postal communication. Many were put into albums, creating new ways to combine images and create visual cultures of disaster for home viewing. Accordion-style albums allowed for personalized, serial organization of images that produced unique, imagistic narratives of the event. The album pages were also two-sided and could be stretched out to view a series of images on recto and verso. References: Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923 震災をイメージ化する 東京と1923年関東大震災のヴィジュアルカルチャー - The Asia. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://apjjf.org/2015/13/6/gennifer-weisenfeld/4270 The Great Kanto Earthquake: Postcards of Tragedy. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://www.tokyoweekender.com/art_and_culture/japanese-culture/the-great-kanto-earthquake-postcards/ See also: Postcards from Hell – Glimpses of the Great Kantō Earthquake; M. William STEELE (International Christian University, Japan) 14th Conference of the European Association of Japanese Studies: Visual Culture and Postcard Research Papers – East Asia Image Collection Blog. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://sites.lafayette.edu/eastasia/2014/09/01/14th-conference-of-the-european-association-of-japanese-studies-visual-culture-and-postcard-research-papers/] And https://icu.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/4503/files/ACS44_01Steele.pdfThis item, a souvenir from Japan from between the wars (circa 1923) was brought home to Research, Victoria by Bill Teagle who was serving in the Royal Australian Navy (1919-1945). Bill Teagle's sister Violet Amelda Teagle had married Theodore (Curly) Feldbauer in 1933. Bill's brother-in-law Curly was taken as a Prisoner of War by the Japanese and died at Sandakan in March 1945. The family did not learn of Curly’s death till months later and Bill's sister, Violet, herself could never forgive the Japanese for what happened to Curly. Curly is remembered on the Eltham Roll of Honour Board and his son, Albert Feldbauer (Bill’s nephew and youngest child of the children of the soldier fathers attending a school in the district), was given the honour of turning the first sod for the Eltham War Memorial Infant Welfare Centre Building. Despite this, the family maintained this cherished souvenir from a time of previous foreign friendship with Japan. The item was possibly given by Bill Teagle to his sister Margaret Rose (formerly Ingram) who later married Richard Edward (Eddie) Fielding in early 1948. (Eddie had been engaged to someone else before he went to war, but his fiancée broke it off before his return to Australia.) It was cared for by the Teagle/Fielding family for approximately one hundred years. It is of particular significance given the family's connection to the Eltham War Memorial and the significance of that memorial to the local community and represents that despite the horrors of war, former friends then foes can become friends again.tom fielding collection, japanese postcard, postcard, 1923, great kanto earthquake, japan, tokyo, yokohama -
Eltham District Historical Society Inc
Photograph - Postcard, The Great Tokyo Earthquake on September 1st, 1923: Ryogoku Station, Tokyo, 1923
The Great Kantō Earthquake of 1 September 1923 devastated the major cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, as well as five other surrounding prefectures and was one of the world’s worst natural disasters of the early twentieth century. In terms of loss of life and material damage, with an estimated 140,000 deaths and countless homeless, it is still Japan’s worst national disaster. Nearly 90% of the newspaper printers were destroyed in the earthquake. These postcards were not produced for aesthetics but as a major tool for the spread of information. Seeing how newspaper companies were left with their offices in shambles, postcard publishers tried to fill the gap hence some were in three languages. A very small number of publishing companies were fortunate enough to survive, one of them being Mitsumura Printing, which took advantage of its remaining resources to churn out postcards. When the Ōsaka Mainichi Shinbunsha published its bilingual three-volume photographic pictorial of the Great Kantō Earthquake just two weeks after the event, the calamity had already been captured in thousands of images that circulated on a national and international media highway. Commercial photographers and photojournalists produced the most abundant and immediate images of the quake, which were transmitted in newspapers, special-issue newspaper pictorials, commemorative photography collections, illustrated survivors’ accounts, and sets of commemorative postcards. These photographic images functioned as both news and souvenirs, rendering their consumers/viewers, inside and outside the devastated locale, into both witnesses and voyeurs. Images in the news media and those issued by respected publishing houses carried the visual authority of supposed facticity. As such they both produced and became the historical record of the event. Since the vast majority of 1923 disaster postcards that survive have no writing on them, they were likely treated more as collectibles than as a form of postal communication. Many were put into albums, creating new ways to combine images and create visual cultures of disaster for home viewing. Accordion-style albums allowed for personalized, serial organization of images that produced unique, imagistic narratives of the event. The album pages were also two-sided and could be stretched out to view a series of images on recto and verso. References: Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923 震災をイメージ化する 東京と1923年関東大震災のヴィジュアルカルチャー - The Asia. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://apjjf.org/2015/13/6/gennifer-weisenfeld/4270 The Great Kanto Earthquake: Postcards of Tragedy. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://www.tokyoweekender.com/art_and_culture/japanese-culture/the-great-kanto-earthquake-postcards/ See also: Postcards from Hell – Glimpses of the Great Kantō Earthquake; M. William STEELE (International Christian University, Japan) 14th Conference of the European Association of Japanese Studies: Visual Culture and Postcard Research Papers – East Asia Image Collection Blog. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://sites.lafayette.edu/eastasia/2014/09/01/14th-conference-of-the-european-association-of-japanese-studies-visual-culture-and-postcard-research-papers/] And https://icu.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/4503/files/ACS44_01Steele.pdfThis item, a souvenir from Japan from between the wars (circa 1923) was brought home to Research, Victoria by Bill Teagle who was serving in the Royal Australian Navy (1919-1945). Bill Teagle's sister Violet Amelda Teagle had married Theodore (Curly) Feldbauer in 1933. Bill's brother-in-law Curly was taken as a Prisoner of War by the Japanese and died at Sandakan in March 1945. The family did not learn of Curly’s death till months later and Bill's sister, Violet, herself could never forgive the Japanese for what happened to Curly. Curly is remembered on the Eltham Roll of Honour Board and his son, Albert Feldbauer (Bill’s nephew and youngest child of the children of the soldier fathers attending a school in the district), was given the honour of turning the first sod for the Eltham War Memorial Infant Welfare Centre Building. Despite this, the family maintained this cherished souvenir from a time of previous foreign friendship with Japan. The item was possibly given by Bill Teagle to his sister Margaret Rose (formerly Ingram) who later married Richard Edward (Eddie) Fielding in early 1948. (Eddie had been engaged to someone else before he went to war, but his fiancée broke it off before his return to Australia.) It was cared for by the Teagle/Fielding family for approximately one hundred years. It is of particular significance given the family's connection to the Eltham War Memorial and the significance of that memorial to the local community and represents that despite the horrors of war, former friends then foes can become friends again.tom fielding collection, japanese postcard, postcard, 1923, great kanto earthquake, japan, tokyo, yokohama -
Eltham District Historical Society Inc
Photograph - Postcard, The Great Tokyo Earthquake on September 1st, 1923: Asakusa Bridge, Tokyo, 1923
The Great Kantō Earthquake of 1 September 1923 devastated the major cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, as well as five other surrounding prefectures and was one of the world’s worst natural disasters of the early twentieth century. In terms of loss of life and material damage, with an estimated 140,000 deaths and countless homeless, it is still Japan’s worst national disaster. Nearly 90% of the newspaper printers were destroyed in the earthquake. These postcards were not produced for aesthetics but as a major tool for the spread of information. Seeing how newspaper companies were left with their offices in shambles, postcard publishers tried to fill the gap hence some were in three languages. A very small number of publishing companies were fortunate enough to survive, one of them being Mitsumura Printing, which took advantage of its remaining resources to churn out postcards. When the Ōsaka Mainichi Shinbunsha published its bilingual three-volume photographic pictorial of the Great Kantō Earthquake just two weeks after the event, the calamity had already been captured in thousands of images that circulated on a national and international media highway. Commercial photographers and photojournalists produced the most abundant and immediate images of the quake, which were transmitted in newspapers, special-issue newspaper pictorials, commemorative photography collections, illustrated survivors’ accounts, and sets of commemorative postcards. These photographic images functioned as both news and souvenirs, rendering their consumers/viewers, inside and outside the devastated locale, into both witnesses and voyeurs. Images in the news media and those issued by respected publishing houses carried the visual authority of supposed facticity. As such they both produced and became the historical record of the event. Since the vast majority of 1923 disaster postcards that survive have no writing on them, they were likely treated more as collectibles than as a form of postal communication. Many were put into albums, creating new ways to combine images and create visual cultures of disaster for home viewing. Accordion-style albums allowed for personalized, serial organization of images that produced unique, imagistic narratives of the event. The album pages were also two-sided and could be stretched out to view a series of images on recto and verso. References: Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923 震災をイメージ化する 東京と1923年関東大震災のヴィジュアルカルチャー - The Asia. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://apjjf.org/2015/13/6/gennifer-weisenfeld/4270 The Great Kanto Earthquake: Postcards of Tragedy. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://www.tokyoweekender.com/art_and_culture/japanese-culture/the-great-kanto-earthquake-postcards/ See also: Postcards from Hell – Glimpses of the Great Kantō Earthquake; M. William STEELE (International Christian University, Japan) 14th Conference of the European Association of Japanese Studies: Visual Culture and Postcard Research Papers – East Asia Image Collection Blog. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://sites.lafayette.edu/eastasia/2014/09/01/14th-conference-of-the-european-association-of-japanese-studies-visual-culture-and-postcard-research-papers/] And https://icu.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/4503/files/ACS44_01Steele.pdfThis item, a souvenir from Japan from between the wars (circa 1923) was brought home to Research, Victoria by Bill Teagle who was serving in the Royal Australian Navy (1919-1945). Bill Teagle's sister Violet Amelda Teagle had married Theodore (Curly) Feldbauer in 1933. Bill's brother-in-law Curly was taken as a Prisoner of War by the Japanese and died at Sandakan in March 1945. The family did not learn of Curly’s death till months later and Bill's sister, Violet, herself could never forgive the Japanese for what happened to Curly. Curly is remembered on the Eltham Roll of Honour Board and his son, Albert Feldbauer (Bill’s nephew and youngest child of the children of the soldier fathers attending a school in the district), was given the honour of turning the first sod for the Eltham War Memorial Infant Welfare Centre Building. Despite this, the family maintained this cherished souvenir from a time of previous foreign friendship with Japan. The item was possibly given by Bill Teagle to his sister Margaret Rose (formerly Ingram) who later married Richard Edward (Eddie) Fielding in early 1948. (Eddie had been engaged to someone else before he went to war, but his fiancée broke it off before his return to Australia.) It was cared for by the Teagle/Fielding family for approximately one hundred years. It is of particular significance given the family's connection to the Eltham War Memorial and the significance of that memorial to the local community and represents that despite the horrors of war, former friends then foes can become friends again.tom fielding collection, japanese postcard, postcard, 1923, great kanto earthquake, japan, tokyo, yokohama -
Eltham District Historical Society Inc
Photograph - Postcard, The Great Yokohama City Earthquake on September 1st, 1923: Looking in front of the Isezaki-machi Nozawaya Kimono Store, Yokohama, 1923
The Great Kantō Earthquake of 1 September 1923 devastated the major cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, as well as five other surrounding prefectures and was one of the world’s worst natural disasters of the early twentieth century. In terms of loss of life and material damage, with an estimated 140,000 deaths and countless homeless, it is still Japan’s worst national disaster. Nearly 90% of the newspaper printers were destroyed in the earthquake. These postcards were not produced for aesthetics but as a major tool for the spread of information. Seeing how newspaper companies were left with their offices in shambles, postcard publishers tried to fill the gap hence some were in three languages. A very small number of publishing companies were fortunate enough to survive, one of them being Mitsumura Printing, which took advantage of its remaining resources to churn out postcards. When the Ōsaka Mainichi Shinbunsha published its bilingual three-volume photographic pictorial of the Great Kantō Earthquake just two weeks after the event, the calamity had already been captured in thousands of images that circulated on a national and international media highway. Commercial photographers and photojournalists produced the most abundant and immediate images of the quake, which were transmitted in newspapers, special-issue newspaper pictorials, commemorative photography collections, illustrated survivors’ accounts, and sets of commemorative postcards. These photographic images functioned as both news and souvenirs, rendering their consumers/viewers, inside and outside the devastated locale, into both witnesses and voyeurs. Images in the news media and those issued by respected publishing houses carried the visual authority of supposed facticity. As such they both produced and became the historical record of the event. Since the vast majority of 1923 disaster postcards that survive have no writing on them, they were likely treated more as collectibles than as a form of postal communication. Many were put into albums, creating new ways to combine images and create visual cultures of disaster for home viewing. Accordion-style albums allowed for personalized, serial organization of images that produced unique, imagistic narratives of the event. The album pages were also two-sided and could be stretched out to view a series of images on recto and verso. References: Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923 震災をイメージ化する 東京と1923年関東大震災のヴィジュアルカルチャー - The Asia. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://apjjf.org/2015/13/6/gennifer-weisenfeld/4270 The Great Kanto Earthquake: Postcards of Tragedy. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://www.tokyoweekender.com/art_and_culture/japanese-culture/the-great-kanto-earthquake-postcards/ See also: Postcards from Hell – Glimpses of the Great Kantō Earthquake; M. William STEELE (International Christian University, Japan) 14th Conference of the European Association of Japanese Studies: Visual Culture and Postcard Research Papers – East Asia Image Collection Blog. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://sites.lafayette.edu/eastasia/2014/09/01/14th-conference-of-the-european-association-of-japanese-studies-visual-culture-and-postcard-research-papers/] And https://icu.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/4503/files/ACS44_01Steele.pdfThis item, a souvenir from Japan from between the wars (circa 1923) was brought home to Research, Victoria by Bill Teagle who was serving in the Royal Australian Navy (1919-1945). Bill Teagle's sister Violet Amelda Teagle had married Theodore (Curly) Feldbauer in 1933. Bill's brother-in-law Curly was taken as a Prisoner of War by the Japanese and died at Sandakan in March 1945. The family did not learn of Curly’s death till months later and Bill's sister, Violet, herself could never forgive the Japanese for what happened to Curly. Curly is remembered on the Eltham Roll of Honour Board and his son, Albert Feldbauer (Bill’s nephew and youngest child of the children of the soldier fathers attending a school in the district), was given the honour of turning the first sod for the Eltham War Memorial Infant Welfare Centre Building. Despite this, the family maintained this cherished souvenir from a time of previous foreign friendship with Japan. The item was possibly given by Bill Teagle to his sister Margaret Rose (formerly Ingram) who later married Richard Edward (Eddie) Fielding in early 1948. (Eddie had been engaged to someone else before he went to war, but his fiancée broke it off before his return to Australia.) It was cared for by the Teagle/Fielding family for approximately one hundred years. It is of particular significance given the family's connection to the Eltham War Memorial and the significance of that memorial to the local community and represents that despite the horrors of war, former friends then foes can become friends again.tom fielding collection, japanese postcard, postcard, 1923, great kanto earthquake, japan, tokyo, yokohama -
Eltham District Historical Society Inc
Photograph - Postcard, The Great Yokohama Earthquake on September 1st, 1923: Looking near Nanking Road, Yokohama, 1923
The Great Kantō Earthquake of 1 September 1923 devastated the major cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, as well as five other surrounding prefectures and was one of the world’s worst natural disasters of the early twentieth century. In terms of loss of life and material damage, with an estimated 140,000 deaths and countless homeless, it is still Japan’s worst national disaster. Nearly 90% of the newspaper printers were destroyed in the earthquake. These postcards were not produced for aesthetics but as a major tool for the spread of information. Seeing how newspaper companies were left with their offices in shambles, postcard publishers tried to fill the gap hence some were in three languages. A very small number of publishing companies were fortunate enough to survive, one of them being Mitsumura Printing, which took advantage of its remaining resources to churn out postcards. When the Ōsaka Mainichi Shinbunsha published its bilingual three-volume photographic pictorial of the Great Kantō Earthquake just two weeks after the event, the calamity had already been captured in thousands of images that circulated on a national and international media highway. Commercial photographers and photojournalists produced the most abundant and immediate images of the quake, which were transmitted in newspapers, special-issue newspaper pictorials, commemorative photography collections, illustrated survivors’ accounts, and sets of commemorative postcards. These photographic images functioned as both news and souvenirs, rendering their consumers/viewers, inside and outside the devastated locale, into both witnesses and voyeurs. Images in the news media and those issued by respected publishing houses carried the visual authority of supposed facticity. As such they both produced and became the historical record of the event. Since the vast majority of 1923 disaster postcards that survive have no writing on them, they were likely treated more as collectibles than as a form of postal communication. Many were put into albums, creating new ways to combine images and create visual cultures of disaster for home viewing. Accordion-style albums allowed for personalized, serial organization of images that produced unique, imagistic narratives of the event. The album pages were also two-sided and could be stretched out to view a series of images on recto and verso. References: Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923 震災をイメージ化する 東京と1923年関東大震災のヴィジュアルカルチャー - The Asia. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://apjjf.org/2015/13/6/gennifer-weisenfeld/4270 The Great Kanto Earthquake: Postcards of Tragedy. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://www.tokyoweekender.com/art_and_culture/japanese-culture/the-great-kanto-earthquake-postcards/ See also: Postcards from Hell – Glimpses of the Great Kantō Earthquake; M. William STEELE (International Christian University, Japan) 14th Conference of the European Association of Japanese Studies: Visual Culture and Postcard Research Papers – East Asia Image Collection Blog. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://sites.lafayette.edu/eastasia/2014/09/01/14th-conference-of-the-european-association-of-japanese-studies-visual-culture-and-postcard-research-papers/] And https://icu.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/4503/files/ACS44_01Steele.pdfThis item, a souvenir from Japan from between the wars (circa 1923) was brought home to Research, Victoria by Bill Teagle who was serving in the Royal Australian Navy (1919-1945). Bill Teagle's sister Violet Amelda Teagle had married Theodore (Curly) Feldbauer in 1933. Bill's brother-in-law Curly was taken as a Prisoner of War by the Japanese and died at Sandakan in March 1945. The family did not learn of Curly’s death till months later and Bill's sister, Violet, herself could never forgive the Japanese for what happened to Curly. Curly is remembered on the Eltham Roll of Honour Board and his son, Albert Feldbauer (Bill’s nephew and youngest child of the children of the soldier fathers attending a school in the district), was given the honour of turning the first sod for the Eltham War Memorial Infant Welfare Centre Building. Despite this, the family maintained this cherished souvenir from a time of previous foreign friendship with Japan. The item was possibly given by Bill Teagle to his sister Margaret Rose (formerly Ingram) who later married Richard Edward (Eddie) Fielding in early 1948. (Eddie had been engaged to someone else before he went to war, but his fiancée broke it off before his return to Australia.) It was cared for by the Teagle/Fielding family for approximately one hundred years. It is of particular significance given the family's connection to the Eltham War Memorial and the significance of that memorial to the local community and represents that despite the horrors of war, former friends then foes can become friends again.tom fielding collection, japanese postcard, postcard, 1923, great kanto earthquake, japan, tokyo, yokohama -
Eltham District Historical Society Inc
Photograph - Postcard, The Great Yokohama Earthquake on September 1st, 1923: Looking at the tiown of Yokohama, 1923
The Great Kantō Earthquake of 1 September 1923 devastated the major cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, as well as five other surrounding prefectures and was one of the world’s worst natural disasters of the early twentieth century. In terms of loss of life and material damage, with an estimated 140,000 deaths and countless homeless, it is still Japan’s worst national disaster. Nearly 90% of the newspaper printers were destroyed in the earthquake. These postcards were not produced for aesthetics but as a major tool for the spread of information. Seeing how newspaper companies were left with their offices in shambles, postcard publishers tried to fill the gap hence some were in three languages. A very small number of publishing companies were fortunate enough to survive, one of them being Mitsumura Printing, which took advantage of its remaining resources to churn out postcards. When the Ōsaka Mainichi Shinbunsha published its bilingual three-volume photographic pictorial of the Great Kantō Earthquake just two weeks after the event, the calamity had already been captured in thousands of images that circulated on a national and international media highway. Commercial photographers and photojournalists produced the most abundant and immediate images of the quake, which were transmitted in newspapers, special-issue newspaper pictorials, commemorative photography collections, illustrated survivors’ accounts, and sets of commemorative postcards. These photographic images functioned as both news and souvenirs, rendering their consumers/viewers, inside and outside the devastated locale, into both witnesses and voyeurs. Images in the news media and those issued by respected publishing houses carried the visual authority of supposed facticity. As such they both produced and became the historical record of the event. Since the vast majority of 1923 disaster postcards that survive have no writing on them, they were likely treated more as collectibles than as a form of postal communication. Many were put into albums, creating new ways to combine images and create visual cultures of disaster for home viewing. Accordion-style albums allowed for personalized, serial organization of images that produced unique, imagistic narratives of the event. The album pages were also two-sided and could be stretched out to view a series of images on recto and verso. References: Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923 震災をイメージ化する 東京と1923年関東大震災のヴィジュアルカルチャー - The Asia. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://apjjf.org/2015/13/6/gennifer-weisenfeld/4270 The Great Kanto Earthquake: Postcards of Tragedy. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://www.tokyoweekender.com/art_and_culture/japanese-culture/the-great-kanto-earthquake-postcards/ See also: Postcards from Hell – Glimpses of the Great Kantō Earthquake; M. William STEELE (International Christian University, Japan) 14th Conference of the European Association of Japanese Studies: Visual Culture and Postcard Research Papers – East Asia Image Collection Blog. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://sites.lafayette.edu/eastasia/2014/09/01/14th-conference-of-the-european-association-of-japanese-studies-visual-culture-and-postcard-research-papers/] And https://icu.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/4503/files/ACS44_01Steele.pdfThis item, a souvenir from Japan from between the wars (circa 1923) was brought home to Research, Victoria by Bill Teagle who was serving in the Royal Australian Navy (1919-1945). Bill Teagle's sister Violet Amelda Teagle had married Theodore (Curly) Feldbauer in 1933. Bill's brother-in-law Curly was taken as a Prisoner of War by the Japanese and died at Sandakan in March 1945. The family did not learn of Curly’s death till months later and Bill's sister, Violet, herself could never forgive the Japanese for what happened to Curly. Curly is remembered on the Eltham Roll of Honour Board and his son, Albert Feldbauer (Bill’s nephew and youngest child of the children of the soldier fathers attending a school in the district), was given the honour of turning the first sod for the Eltham War Memorial Infant Welfare Centre Building. Despite this, the family maintained this cherished souvenir from a time of previous foreign friendship with Japan. The item was possibly given by Bill Teagle to his sister Margaret Rose (formerly Ingram) who later married Richard Edward (Eddie) Fielding in early 1948. (Eddie had been engaged to someone else before he went to war, but his fiancée broke it off before his return to Australia.) It was cared for by the Teagle/Fielding family for approximately one hundred years. It is of particular significance given the family's connection to the Eltham War Memorial and the significance of that memorial to the local community and represents that despite the horrors of war, former friends then foes can become friends again.tom fielding collection, japanese postcard, postcard, 1923, great kanto earthquake, japan, tokyo, yokohama -
Eltham District Historical Society Inc
Photograph - Postcard, The Great Yokohama Earthquake on September 1st, 1923: Looking near Yokohama Specie Bank, 1923
The Great Kantō Earthquake of 1 September 1923 devastated the major cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, as well as five other surrounding prefectures and was one of the world’s worst natural disasters of the early twentieth century. In terms of loss of life and material damage, with an estimated 140,000 deaths and countless homeless, it is still Japan’s worst national disaster. Nearly 90% of the newspaper printers were destroyed in the earthquake. These postcards were not produced for aesthetics but as a major tool for the spread of information. Seeing how newspaper companies were left with their offices in shambles, postcard publishers tried to fill the gap hence some were in three languages. A very small number of publishing companies were fortunate enough to survive, one of them being Mitsumura Printing, which took advantage of its remaining resources to churn out postcards. When the Ōsaka Mainichi Shinbunsha published its bilingual three-volume photographic pictorial of the Great Kantō Earthquake just two weeks after the event, the calamity had already been captured in thousands of images that circulated on a national and international media highway. Commercial photographers and photojournalists produced the most abundant and immediate images of the quake, which were transmitted in newspapers, special-issue newspaper pictorials, commemorative photography collections, illustrated survivors’ accounts, and sets of commemorative postcards. These photographic images functioned as both news and souvenirs, rendering their consumers/viewers, inside and outside the devastated locale, into both witnesses and voyeurs. Images in the news media and those issued by respected publishing houses carried the visual authority of supposed facticity. As such they both produced and became the historical record of the event. Since the vast majority of 1923 disaster postcards that survive have no writing on them, they were likely treated more as collectibles than as a form of postal communication. Many were put into albums, creating new ways to combine images and create visual cultures of disaster for home viewing. Accordion-style albums allowed for personalized, serial organization of images that produced unique, imagistic narratives of the event. The album pages were also two-sided and could be stretched out to view a series of images on recto and verso. References: Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923 震災をイメージ化する 東京と1923年関東大震災のヴィジュアルカルチャー - The Asia. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://apjjf.org/2015/13/6/gennifer-weisenfeld/4270 The Great Kanto Earthquake: Postcards of Tragedy. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://www.tokyoweekender.com/art_and_culture/japanese-culture/the-great-kanto-earthquake-postcards/ See also: Postcards from Hell – Glimpses of the Great Kantō Earthquake; M. William STEELE (International Christian University, Japan) 14th Conference of the European Association of Japanese Studies: Visual Culture and Postcard Research Papers – East Asia Image Collection Blog. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://sites.lafayette.edu/eastasia/2014/09/01/14th-conference-of-the-european-association-of-japanese-studies-visual-culture-and-postcard-research-papers/] And https://icu.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/4503/files/ACS44_01Steele.pdfThis item, a souvenir from Japan from between the wars (circa 1923) was brought home to Research, Victoria by Bill Teagle who was serving in the Royal Australian Navy (1919-1945). Bill Teagle's sister Violet Amelda Teagle had married Theodore (Curly) Feldbauer in 1933. Bill's brother-in-law Curly was taken as a Prisoner of War by the Japanese and died at Sandakan in March 1945. The family did not learn of Curly’s death till months later and Bill's sister, Violet, herself could never forgive the Japanese for what happened to Curly. Curly is remembered on the Eltham Roll of Honour Board and his son, Albert Feldbauer (Bill’s nephew and youngest child of the children of the soldier fathers attending a school in the district), was given the honour of turning the first sod for the Eltham War Memorial Infant Welfare Centre Building. Despite this, the family maintained this cherished souvenir from a time of previous foreign friendship with Japan. The item was possibly given by Bill Teagle to his sister Margaret Rose (formerly Ingram) who later married Richard Edward (Eddie) Fielding in early 1948. (Eddie had been engaged to someone else before he went to war, but his fiancée broke it off before his return to Australia.) It was cared for by the Teagle/Fielding family for approximately one hundred years. It is of particular significance given the family's connection to the Eltham War Memorial and the significance of that memorial to the local community and represents that despite the horrors of war, former friends then foes can become friends again.tom fielding collection, japanese postcard, postcard, 1923, great kanto earthquake, japan, tokyo, yokohama -
Eltham District Historical Society Inc
Photograph - Postcard, The Great Yokohama Earthquake on September 1st, 1923: Looking at Sakuragi Station, Yokohama, 1923
The Great Kantō Earthquake of 1 September 1923 devastated the major cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, as well as five other surrounding prefectures and was one of the world’s worst natural disasters of the early twentieth century. In terms of loss of life and material damage, with an estimated 140,000 deaths and countless homeless, it is still Japan’s worst national disaster. Nearly 90% of the newspaper printers were destroyed in the earthquake. These postcards were not produced for aesthetics but as a major tool for the spread of information. Seeing how newspaper companies were left with their offices in shambles, postcard publishers tried to fill the gap hence some were in three languages. A very small number of publishing companies were fortunate enough to survive, one of them being Mitsumura Printing, which took advantage of its remaining resources to churn out postcards. When the Ōsaka Mainichi Shinbunsha published its bilingual three-volume photographic pictorial of the Great Kantō Earthquake just two weeks after the event, the calamity had already been captured in thousands of images that circulated on a national and international media highway. Commercial photographers and photojournalists produced the most abundant and immediate images of the quake, which were transmitted in newspapers, special-issue newspaper pictorials, commemorative photography collections, illustrated survivors’ accounts, and sets of commemorative postcards. These photographic images functioned as both news and souvenirs, rendering their consumers/viewers, inside and outside the devastated locale, into both witnesses and voyeurs. Images in the news media and those issued by respected publishing houses carried the visual authority of supposed facticity. As such they both produced and became the historical record of the event. Since the vast majority of 1923 disaster postcards that survive have no writing on them, they were likely treated more as collectibles than as a form of postal communication. Many were put into albums, creating new ways to combine images and create visual cultures of disaster for home viewing. Accordion-style albums allowed for personalized, serial organization of images that produced unique, imagistic narratives of the event. The album pages were also two-sided and could be stretched out to view a series of images on recto and verso. References: Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923 震災をイメージ化する 東京と1923年関東大震災のヴィジュアルカルチャー - The Asia. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://apjjf.org/2015/13/6/gennifer-weisenfeld/4270 The Great Kanto Earthquake: Postcards of Tragedy. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://www.tokyoweekender.com/art_and_culture/japanese-culture/the-great-kanto-earthquake-postcards/ See also: Postcards from Hell – Glimpses of the Great Kantō Earthquake; M. William STEELE (International Christian University, Japan) 14th Conference of the European Association of Japanese Studies: Visual Culture and Postcard Research Papers – East Asia Image Collection Blog. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://sites.lafayette.edu/eastasia/2014/09/01/14th-conference-of-the-european-association-of-japanese-studies-visual-culture-and-postcard-research-papers/] And https://icu.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/4503/files/ACS44_01Steele.pdfThis item, a souvenir from Japan from between the wars (circa 1923) was brought home to Research, Victoria by Bill Teagle who was serving in the Royal Australian Navy (1919-1945). Bill Teagle's sister Violet Amelda Teagle had married Theodore (Curly) Feldbauer in 1933. Bill's brother-in-law Curly was taken as a Prisoner of War by the Japanese and died at Sandakan in March 1945. The family did not learn of Curly’s death till months later and Bill's sister, Violet, herself could never forgive the Japanese for what happened to Curly. Curly is remembered on the Eltham Roll of Honour Board and his son, Albert Feldbauer (Bill’s nephew and youngest child of the children of the soldier fathers attending a school in the district), was given the honour of turning the first sod for the Eltham War Memorial Infant Welfare Centre Building. Despite this, the family maintained this cherished souvenir from a time of previous foreign friendship with Japan. The item was possibly given by Bill Teagle to his sister Margaret Rose (formerly Ingram) who later married Richard Edward (Eddie) Fielding in early 1948. (Eddie had been engaged to someone else before he went to war, but his fiancée broke it off before his return to Australia.) It was cared for by the Teagle/Fielding family for approximately one hundred years. It is of particular significance given the family's connection to the Eltham War Memorial and the significance of that memorial to the local community and represents that despite the horrors of war, former friends then foes can become friends again.tom fielding collection, japanese postcard, postcard, 1923, great kanto earthquake, japan, tokyo, yokohama -
Eltham District Historical Society Inc
Photograph - Postcard, The Great Yokohama Earthquake on September 1st, 1923: Looking at Honchodori, Yokohama, 1923
The Great Kantō Earthquake of 1 September 1923 devastated the major cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, as well as five other surrounding prefectures and was one of the world’s worst natural disasters of the early twentieth century. In terms of loss of life and material damage, with an estimated 140,000 deaths and countless homeless, it is still Japan’s worst national disaster. Nearly 90% of the newspaper printers were destroyed in the earthquake. These postcards were not produced for aesthetics but as a major tool for the spread of information. Seeing how newspaper companies were left with their offices in shambles, postcard publishers tried to fill the gap hence some were in three languages. A very small number of publishing companies were fortunate enough to survive, one of them being Mitsumura Printing, which took advantage of its remaining resources to churn out postcards. When the Ōsaka Mainichi Shinbunsha published its bilingual three-volume photographic pictorial of the Great Kantō Earthquake just two weeks after the event, the calamity had already been captured in thousands of images that circulated on a national and international media highway. Commercial photographers and photojournalists produced the most abundant and immediate images of the quake, which were transmitted in newspapers, special-issue newspaper pictorials, commemorative photography collections, illustrated survivors’ accounts, and sets of commemorative postcards. These photographic images functioned as both news and souvenirs, rendering their consumers/viewers, inside and outside the devastated locale, into both witnesses and voyeurs. Images in the news media and those issued by respected publishing houses carried the visual authority of supposed facticity. As such they both produced and became the historical record of the event. Since the vast majority of 1923 disaster postcards that survive have no writing on them, they were likely treated more as collectibles than as a form of postal communication. Many were put into albums, creating new ways to combine images and create visual cultures of disaster for home viewing. Accordion-style albums allowed for personalized, serial organization of images that produced unique, imagistic narratives of the event. The album pages were also two-sided and could be stretched out to view a series of images on recto and verso. References: Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923 震災をイメージ化する 東京と1923年関東大震災のヴィジュアルカルチャー - The Asia. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://apjjf.org/2015/13/6/gennifer-weisenfeld/4270 The Great Kanto Earthquake: Postcards of Tragedy. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://www.tokyoweekender.com/art_and_culture/japanese-culture/the-great-kanto-earthquake-postcards/ See also: Postcards from Hell – Glimpses of the Great Kantō Earthquake; M. William STEELE (International Christian University, Japan) 14th Conference of the European Association of Japanese Studies: Visual Culture and Postcard Research Papers – East Asia Image Collection Blog. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://sites.lafayette.edu/eastasia/2014/09/01/14th-conference-of-the-european-association-of-japanese-studies-visual-culture-and-postcard-research-papers/] And https://icu.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/4503/files/ACS44_01Steele.pdfThis item, a souvenir from Japan from between the wars (circa 1923) was brought home to Research, Victoria by Bill Teagle who was serving in the Royal Australian Navy (1919-1945). Bill Teagle's sister Violet Amelda Teagle had married Theodore (Curly) Feldbauer in 1933. Bill's brother-in-law Curly was taken as a Prisoner of War by the Japanese and died at Sandakan in March 1945. The family did not learn of Curly’s death till months later and Bill's sister, Violet, herself could never forgive the Japanese for what happened to Curly. Curly is remembered on the Eltham Roll of Honour Board and his son, Albert Feldbauer (Bill’s nephew and youngest child of the children of the soldier fathers attending a school in the district), was given the honour of turning the first sod for the Eltham War Memorial Infant Welfare Centre Building. Despite this, the family maintained this cherished souvenir from a time of previous foreign friendship with Japan. The item was possibly given by Bill Teagle to his sister Margaret Rose (formerly Ingram) who later married Richard Edward (Eddie) Fielding in early 1948. (Eddie had been engaged to someone else before he went to war, but his fiancée broke it off before his return to Australia.) It was cared for by the Teagle/Fielding family for approximately one hundred years. It is of particular significance given the family's connection to the Eltham War Memorial and the significance of that memorial to the local community and represents that despite the horrors of war, former friends then foes can become friends again.tom fielding collection, japanese postcard, postcard, 1923, great kanto earthquake, japan, tokyo, yokohama -
Eltham District Historical Society Inc
Photograph - Postcard, The Great Yokohama Earthquake on September 1st, 1923: Looking at Minatocho Road, Yokahama, 1923
The Great Kantō Earthquake of 1 September 1923 devastated the major cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, as well as five other surrounding prefectures and was one of the world’s worst natural disasters of the early twentieth century. In terms of loss of life and material damage, with an estimated 140,000 deaths and countless homeless, it is still Japan’s worst national disaster. Nearly 90% of the newspaper printers were destroyed in the earthquake. These postcards were not produced for aesthetics but as a major tool for the spread of information. Seeing how newspaper companies were left with their offices in shambles, postcard publishers tried to fill the gap hence some were in three languages. A very small number of publishing companies were fortunate enough to survive, one of them being Mitsumura Printing, which took advantage of its remaining resources to churn out postcards. When the Ōsaka Mainichi Shinbunsha published its bilingual three-volume photographic pictorial of the Great Kantō Earthquake just two weeks after the event, the calamity had already been captured in thousands of images that circulated on a national and international media highway. Commercial photographers and photojournalists produced the most abundant and immediate images of the quake, which were transmitted in newspapers, special-issue newspaper pictorials, commemorative photography collections, illustrated survivors’ accounts, and sets of commemorative postcards. These photographic images functioned as both news and souvenirs, rendering their consumers/viewers, inside and outside the devastated locale, into both witnesses and voyeurs. Images in the news media and those issued by respected publishing houses carried the visual authority of supposed facticity. As such they both produced and became the historical record of the event. Since the vast majority of 1923 disaster postcards that survive have no writing on them, they were likely treated more as collectibles than as a form of postal communication. Many were put into albums, creating new ways to combine images and create visual cultures of disaster for home viewing. Accordion-style albums allowed for personalized, serial organization of images that produced unique, imagistic narratives of the event. The album pages were also two-sided and could be stretched out to view a series of images on recto and verso. References: Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923 震災をイメージ化する 東京と1923年関東大震災のヴィジュアルカルチャー - The Asia. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://apjjf.org/2015/13/6/gennifer-weisenfeld/4270 The Great Kanto Earthquake: Postcards of Tragedy. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://www.tokyoweekender.com/art_and_culture/japanese-culture/the-great-kanto-earthquake-postcards/ See also: Postcards from Hell – Glimpses of the Great Kantō Earthquake; M. William STEELE (International Christian University, Japan) 14th Conference of the European Association of Japanese Studies: Visual Culture and Postcard Research Papers – East Asia Image Collection Blog. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://sites.lafayette.edu/eastasia/2014/09/01/14th-conference-of-the-european-association-of-japanese-studies-visual-culture-and-postcard-research-papers/] And https://icu.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/4503/files/ACS44_01Steele.pdfThis item, a souvenir from Japan from between the wars (circa 1923) was brought home to Research, Victoria by Bill Teagle who was serving in the Royal Australian Navy (1919-1945). Bill Teagle's sister Violet Amelda Teagle had married Theodore (Curly) Feldbauer in 1933. Bill's brother-in-law Curly was taken as a Prisoner of War by the Japanese and died at Sandakan in March 1945. The family did not learn of Curly’s death till months later and Bill's sister, Violet, herself could never forgive the Japanese for what happened to Curly. Curly is remembered on the Eltham Roll of Honour Board and his son, Albert Feldbauer (Bill’s nephew and youngest child of the children of the soldier fathers attending a school in the district), was given the honour of turning the first sod for the Eltham War Memorial Infant Welfare Centre Building. Despite this, the family maintained this cherished souvenir from a time of previous foreign friendship with Japan. The item was possibly given by Bill Teagle to his sister Margaret Rose (formerly Ingram) who later married Richard Edward (Eddie) Fielding in early 1948. (Eddie had been engaged to someone else before he went to war, but his fiancée broke it off before his return to Australia.) It was cared for by the Teagle/Fielding family for approximately one hundred years. It is of particular significance given the family's connection to the Eltham War Memorial and the significance of that memorial to the local community and represents that despite the horrors of war, former friends then foes can become friends again.tom fielding collection, japanese postcard, postcard, 1923, great kanto earthquake, japan, tokyo, yokohama -
Eltham District Historical Society Inc
Photograph - Postcard, The Great Yokohama Earthquake on September 1st, 1923: Looking at Yokohamashi Office, Yokohama, 1923
The Great Kantō Earthquake of 1 September 1923 devastated the major cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, as well as five other surrounding prefectures and was one of the world’s worst natural disasters of the early twentieth century. In terms of loss of life and material damage, with an estimated 140,000 deaths and countless homeless, it is still Japan’s worst national disaster. Nearly 90% of the newspaper printers were destroyed in the earthquake. These postcards were not produced for aesthetics but as a major tool for the spread of information. Seeing how newspaper companies were left with their offices in shambles, postcard publishers tried to fill the gap hence some were in three languages. A very small number of publishing companies were fortunate enough to survive, one of them being Mitsumura Printing, which took advantage of its remaining resources to churn out postcards. When the Ōsaka Mainichi Shinbunsha published its bilingual three-volume photographic pictorial of the Great Kantō Earthquake just two weeks after the event, the calamity had already been captured in thousands of images that circulated on a national and international media highway. Commercial photographers and photojournalists produced the most abundant and immediate images of the quake, which were transmitted in newspapers, special-issue newspaper pictorials, commemorative photography collections, illustrated survivors’ accounts, and sets of commemorative postcards. These photographic images functioned as both news and souvenirs, rendering their consumers/viewers, inside and outside the devastated locale, into both witnesses and voyeurs. Images in the news media and those issued by respected publishing houses carried the visual authority of supposed facticity. As such they both produced and became the historical record of the event. Since the vast majority of 1923 disaster postcards that survive have no writing on them, they were likely treated more as collectibles than as a form of postal communication. Many were put into albums, creating new ways to combine images and create visual cultures of disaster for home viewing. Accordion-style albums allowed for personalized, serial organization of images that produced unique, imagistic narratives of the event. The album pages were also two-sided and could be stretched out to view a series of images on recto and verso. References: Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923 震災をイメージ化する 東京と1923年関東大震災のヴィジュアルカルチャー - The Asia. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://apjjf.org/2015/13/6/gennifer-weisenfeld/4270 The Great Kanto Earthquake: Postcards of Tragedy. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://www.tokyoweekender.com/art_and_culture/japanese-culture/the-great-kanto-earthquake-postcards/ See also: Postcards from Hell – Glimpses of the Great Kantō Earthquake; M. William STEELE (International Christian University, Japan) 14th Conference of the European Association of Japanese Studies: Visual Culture and Postcard Research Papers – East Asia Image Collection Blog. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://sites.lafayette.edu/eastasia/2014/09/01/14th-conference-of-the-european-association-of-japanese-studies-visual-culture-and-postcard-research-papers/] And https://icu.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/4503/files/ACS44_01Steele.pdfThis item, a souvenir from Japan from between the wars (circa 1923) was brought home to Research, Victoria by Bill Teagle who was serving in the Royal Australian Navy (1919-1945). Bill Teagle's sister Violet Amelda Teagle had married Theodore (Curly) Feldbauer in 1933. Bill's brother-in-law Curly was taken as a Prisoner of War by the Japanese and died at Sandakan in March 1945. The family did not learn of Curly’s death till months later and Bill's sister, Violet, herself could never forgive the Japanese for what happened to Curly. Curly is remembered on the Eltham Roll of Honour Board and his son, Albert Feldbauer (Bill’s nephew and youngest child of the children of the soldier fathers attending a school in the district), was given the honour of turning the first sod for the Eltham War Memorial Infant Welfare Centre Building. Despite this, the family maintained this cherished souvenir from a time of previous foreign friendship with Japan. The item was possibly given by Bill Teagle to his sister Margaret Rose (formerly Ingram) who later married Richard Edward (Eddie) Fielding in early 1948. (Eddie had been engaged to someone else before he went to war, but his fiancée broke it off before his return to Australia.) It was cared for by the Teagle/Fielding family for approximately one hundred years. It is of particular significance given the family's connection to the Eltham War Memorial and the significance of that memorial to the local community and represents that despite the horrors of war, former friends then foes can become friends again.tom fielding collection, japanese postcard, postcard, 1923, great kanto earthquake, japan, tokyo, yokohama -
Eltham District Historical Society Inc
Photograph - Postcard, The Great Tokyo Earthquake on September 1st, 1923: Ruins of burned streetcars, Tokyo, 1923
The Great Kantō Earthquake of 1 September 1923 devastated the major cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, as well as five other surrounding prefectures and was one of the world’s worst natural disasters of the early twentieth century. In terms of loss of life and material damage, with an estimated 140,000 deaths and countless homeless, it is still Japan’s worst national disaster. Nearly 90% of the newspaper printers were destroyed in the earthquake. These postcards were not produced for aesthetics but as a major tool for the spread of information. Seeing how newspaper companies were left with their offices in shambles, postcard publishers tried to fill the gap hence some were in three languages. A very small number of publishing companies were fortunate enough to survive, one of them being Mitsumura Printing, which took advantage of its remaining resources to churn out postcards. When the Ōsaka Mainichi Shinbunsha published its bilingual three-volume photographic pictorial of the Great Kantō Earthquake just two weeks after the event, the calamity had already been captured in thousands of images that circulated on a national and international media highway. Commercial photographers and photojournalists produced the most abundant and immediate images of the quake, which were transmitted in newspapers, special-issue newspaper pictorials, commemorative photography collections, illustrated survivors’ accounts, and sets of commemorative postcards. These photographic images functioned as both news and souvenirs, rendering their consumers/viewers, inside and outside the devastated locale, into both witnesses and voyeurs. Images in the news media and those issued by respected publishing houses carried the visual authority of supposed facticity. As such they both produced and became the historical record of the event. Since the vast majority of 1923 disaster postcards that survive have no writing on them, they were likely treated more as collectibles than as a form of postal communication. Many were put into albums, creating new ways to combine images and create visual cultures of disaster for home viewing. Accordion-style albums allowed for personalized, serial organization of images that produced unique, imagistic narratives of the event. The album pages were also two-sided and could be stretched out to view a series of images on recto and verso. References: Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923 震災をイメージ化する 東京と1923年関東大震災のヴィジュアルカルチャー - The Asia. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://apjjf.org/2015/13/6/gennifer-weisenfeld/4270 The Great Kanto Earthquake: Postcards of Tragedy. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://www.tokyoweekender.com/art_and_culture/japanese-culture/the-great-kanto-earthquake-postcards/ See also: Postcards from Hell – Glimpses of the Great Kantō Earthquake; M. William STEELE (International Christian University, Japan) 14th Conference of the European Association of Japanese Studies: Visual Culture and Postcard Research Papers – East Asia Image Collection Blog. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://sites.lafayette.edu/eastasia/2014/09/01/14th-conference-of-the-european-association-of-japanese-studies-visual-culture-and-postcard-research-papers/] And https://icu.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/4503/files/ACS44_01Steele.pdfThis item, a souvenir from Japan from between the wars (circa 1923) was brought home to Research, Victoria by Bill Teagle who was serving in the Royal Australian Navy (1919-1945). Bill Teagle's sister Violet Amelda Teagle had married Theodore (Curly) Feldbauer in 1933. Bill's brother-in-law Curly was taken as a Prisoner of War by the Japanese and died at Sandakan in March 1945. The family did not learn of Curly’s death till months later and Bill's sister, Violet, herself could never forgive the Japanese for what happened to Curly. Curly is remembered on the Eltham Roll of Honour Board and his son, Albert Feldbauer (Bill’s nephew and youngest child of the children of the soldier fathers attending a school in the district), was given the honour of turning the first sod for the Eltham War Memorial Infant Welfare Centre Building. Despite this, the family maintained this cherished souvenir from a time of previous foreign friendship with Japan. The item was possibly given by Bill Teagle to his sister Margaret Rose (formerly Ingram) who later married Richard Edward (Eddie) Fielding in early 1948. (Eddie had been engaged to someone else before he went to war, but his fiancée broke it off before his return to Australia.) It was cared for by the Teagle/Fielding family for approximately one hundred years. It is of particular significance given the family's connection to the Eltham War Memorial and the significance of that memorial to the local community and represents that despite the horrors of war, former friends then foes can become friends again.tom fielding collection, japanese postcard, postcard, 1923, great kanto earthquake, japan, tokyo, yokohama -
Eltham District Historical Society Inc
Photograph - Postcard, The Great Tokyo Earthquake on September 1st, 1923: Burned ruins of the Mitsukoshi Kimono Store, Tokyo, 1923
The Great Kantō Earthquake of 1 September 1923 devastated the major cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, as well as five other surrounding prefectures and was one of the world’s worst natural disasters of the early twentieth century. In terms of loss of life and material damage, with an estimated 140,000 deaths and countless homeless, it is still Japan’s worst national disaster. Nearly 90% of the newspaper printers were destroyed in the earthquake. These postcards were not produced for aesthetics but as a major tool for the spread of information. Seeing how newspaper companies were left with their offices in shambles, postcard publishers tried to fill the gap hence some were in three languages. A very small number of publishing companies were fortunate enough to survive, one of them being Mitsumura Printing, which took advantage of its remaining resources to churn out postcards. When the Ōsaka Mainichi Shinbunsha published its bilingual three-volume photographic pictorial of the Great Kantō Earthquake just two weeks after the event, the calamity had already been captured in thousands of images that circulated on a national and international media highway. Commercial photographers and photojournalists produced the most abundant and immediate images of the quake, which were transmitted in newspapers, special-issue newspaper pictorials, commemorative photography collections, illustrated survivors’ accounts, and sets of commemorative postcards. These photographic images functioned as both news and souvenirs, rendering their consumers/viewers, inside and outside the devastated locale, into both witnesses and voyeurs. Images in the news media and those issued by respected publishing houses carried the visual authority of supposed facticity. As such they both produced and became the historical record of the event. Since the vast majority of 1923 disaster postcards that survive have no writing on them, they were likely treated more as collectibles than as a form of postal communication. Many were put into albums, creating new ways to combine images and create visual cultures of disaster for home viewing. Accordion-style albums allowed for personalized, serial organization of images that produced unique, imagistic narratives of the event. The album pages were also two-sided and could be stretched out to view a series of images on recto and verso. References: Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923 震災をイメージ化する 東京と1923年関東大震災のヴィジュアルカルチャー - The Asia. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://apjjf.org/2015/13/6/gennifer-weisenfeld/4270 The Great Kanto Earthquake: Postcards of Tragedy. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://www.tokyoweekender.com/art_and_culture/japanese-culture/the-great-kanto-earthquake-postcards/ See also: Postcards from Hell – Glimpses of the Great Kantō Earthquake; M. William STEELE (International Christian University, Japan) 14th Conference of the European Association of Japanese Studies: Visual Culture and Postcard Research Papers – East Asia Image Collection Blog. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://sites.lafayette.edu/eastasia/2014/09/01/14th-conference-of-the-european-association-of-japanese-studies-visual-culture-and-postcard-research-papers/] And https://icu.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/4503/files/ACS44_01Steele.pdfThis item, a souvenir from Japan from between the wars (circa 1923) was brought home to Research, Victoria by Bill Teagle who was serving in the Royal Australian Navy (1919-1945). Bill Teagle's sister Violet Amelda Teagle had married Theodore (Curly) Feldbauer in 1933. Bill's brother-in-law Curly was taken as a Prisoner of War by the Japanese and died at Sandakan in March 1945. The family did not learn of Curly’s death till months later and Bill's sister, Violet, herself could never forgive the Japanese for what happened to Curly. Curly is remembered on the Eltham Roll of Honour Board and his son, Albert Feldbauer (Bill’s nephew and youngest child of the children of the soldier fathers attending a school in the district), was given the honour of turning the first sod for the Eltham War Memorial Infant Welfare Centre Building. Despite this, the family maintained this cherished souvenir from a time of previous foreign friendship with Japan. The item was possibly given by Bill Teagle to his sister Margaret Rose (formerly Ingram) who later married Richard Edward (Eddie) Fielding in early 1948. (Eddie had been engaged to someone else before he went to war, but his fiancée broke it off before his return to Australia.) It was cared for by the Teagle/Fielding family for approximately one hundred years. It is of particular significance given the family's connection to the Eltham War Memorial and the significance of that memorial to the local community and represents that despite the horrors of war, former friends then foes can become friends again.tom fielding collection, japanese postcard, postcard, 1923, great kanto earthquake, japan, tokyo, yokohama -
Eltham District Historical Society Inc
Photograph - Postcard, The Great Tokyo Earthquake on September 1st, 1923: The business disctrict, Ogawamachi Street, Kanda, Tokyo, 1923
The Great Kantō Earthquake of 1 September 1923 devastated the major cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, as well as five other surrounding prefectures and was one of the world’s worst natural disasters of the early twentieth century. In terms of loss of life and material damage, with an estimated 140,000 deaths and countless homeless, it is still Japan’s worst national disaster. Nearly 90% of the newspaper printers were destroyed in the earthquake. These postcards were not produced for aesthetics but as a major tool for the spread of information. Seeing how newspaper companies were left with their offices in shambles, postcard publishers tried to fill the gap hence some were in three languages. A very small number of publishing companies were fortunate enough to survive, one of them being Mitsumura Printing, which took advantage of its remaining resources to churn out postcards. When the Ōsaka Mainichi Shinbunsha published its bilingual three-volume photographic pictorial of the Great Kantō Earthquake just two weeks after the event, the calamity had already been captured in thousands of images that circulated on a national and international media highway. Commercial photographers and photojournalists produced the most abundant and immediate images of the quake, which were transmitted in newspapers, special-issue newspaper pictorials, commemorative photography collections, illustrated survivors’ accounts, and sets of commemorative postcards. These photographic images functioned as both news and souvenirs, rendering their consumers/viewers, inside and outside the devastated locale, into both witnesses and voyeurs. Images in the news media and those issued by respected publishing houses carried the visual authority of supposed facticity. As such they both produced and became the historical record of the event. Since the vast majority of 1923 disaster postcards that survive have no writing on them, they were likely treated more as collectibles than as a form of postal communication. Many were put into albums, creating new ways to combine images and create visual cultures of disaster for home viewing. Accordion-style albums allowed for personalized, serial organization of images that produced unique, imagistic narratives of the event. The album pages were also two-sided and could be stretched out to view a series of images on recto and verso. References: Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923 震災をイメージ化する 東京と1923年関東大震災のヴィジュアルカルチャー - The Asia. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://apjjf.org/2015/13/6/gennifer-weisenfeld/4270 The Great Kanto Earthquake: Postcards of Tragedy. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://www.tokyoweekender.com/art_and_culture/japanese-culture/the-great-kanto-earthquake-postcards/ See also: Postcards from Hell – Glimpses of the Great Kantō Earthquake; M. William STEELE (International Christian University, Japan) 14th Conference of the European Association of Japanese Studies: Visual Culture and Postcard Research Papers – East Asia Image Collection Blog. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://sites.lafayette.edu/eastasia/2014/09/01/14th-conference-of-the-european-association-of-japanese-studies-visual-culture-and-postcard-research-papers/] And https://icu.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/4503/files/ACS44_01Steele.pdfThis item, a souvenir from Japan from between the wars (circa 1923) was brought home to Research, Victoria by Bill Teagle who was serving in the Royal Australian Navy (1919-1945). Bill Teagle's sister Violet Amelda Teagle had married Theodore (Curly) Feldbauer in 1933. Bill's brother-in-law Curly was taken as a Prisoner of War by the Japanese and died at Sandakan in March 1945. The family did not learn of Curly’s death till months later and Bill's sister, Violet, herself could never forgive the Japanese for what happened to Curly. Curly is remembered on the Eltham Roll of Honour Board and his son, Albert Feldbauer (Bill’s nephew and youngest child of the children of the soldier fathers attending a school in the district), was given the honour of turning the first sod for the Eltham War Memorial Infant Welfare Centre Building. Despite this, the family maintained this cherished souvenir from a time of previous foreign friendship with Japan. The item was possibly given by Bill Teagle to his sister Margaret Rose (formerly Ingram) who later married Richard Edward (Eddie) Fielding in early 1948. (Eddie had been engaged to someone else before he went to war, but his fiancée broke it off before his return to Australia.) It was cared for by the Teagle/Fielding family for approximately one hundred years. It is of particular significance given the family's connection to the Eltham War Memorial and the significance of that memorial to the local community and represents that despite the horrors of war, former friends then foes can become friends again.tom fielding collection, japanese postcard, postcard, 1923, great kanto earthquake, japan, tokyo, yokohama -
Eltham District Historical Society Inc
Photograph - Postcard, The Great Tokyo Earthquake on September 1st, 1923: Taisho 12 Near Shinbashi Station, Tokyo, 1923
The Great Kantō Earthquake of 1 September 1923 devastated the major cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, as well as five other surrounding prefectures and was one of the world’s worst natural disasters of the early twentieth century. In terms of loss of life and material damage, with an estimated 140,000 deaths and countless homeless, it is still Japan’s worst national disaster. Nearly 90% of the newspaper printers were destroyed in the earthquake. These postcards were not produced for aesthetics but as a major tool for the spread of information. Seeing how newspaper companies were left with their offices in shambles, postcard publishers tried to fill the gap hence some were in three languages. A very small number of publishing companies were fortunate enough to survive, one of them being Mitsumura Printing, which took advantage of its remaining resources to churn out postcards. When the Ōsaka Mainichi Shinbunsha published its bilingual three-volume photographic pictorial of the Great Kantō Earthquake just two weeks after the event, the calamity had already been captured in thousands of images that circulated on a national and international media highway. Commercial photographers and photojournalists produced the most abundant and immediate images of the quake, which were transmitted in newspapers, special-issue newspaper pictorials, commemorative photography collections, illustrated survivors’ accounts, and sets of commemorative postcards. These photographic images functioned as both news and souvenirs, rendering their consumers/viewers, inside and outside the devastated locale, into both witnesses and voyeurs. Images in the news media and those issued by respected publishing houses carried the visual authority of supposed facticity. As such they both produced and became the historical record of the event. Since the vast majority of 1923 disaster postcards that survive have no writing on them, they were likely treated more as collectibles than as a form of postal communication. Many were put into albums, creating new ways to combine images and create visual cultures of disaster for home viewing. Accordion-style albums allowed for personalized, serial organization of images that produced unique, imagistic narratives of the event. The album pages were also two-sided and could be stretched out to view a series of images on recto and verso. References: Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923 震災をイメージ化する 東京と1923年関東大震災のヴィジュアルカルチャー - The Asia. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://apjjf.org/2015/13/6/gennifer-weisenfeld/4270 The Great Kanto Earthquake: Postcards of Tragedy. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://www.tokyoweekender.com/art_and_culture/japanese-culture/the-great-kanto-earthquake-postcards/ See also: Postcards from Hell – Glimpses of the Great Kantō Earthquake; M. William STEELE (International Christian University, Japan) 14th Conference of the European Association of Japanese Studies: Visual Culture and Postcard Research Papers – East Asia Image Collection Blog. (2024, March 31). Retrieved from https://sites.lafayette.edu/eastasia/2014/09/01/14th-conference-of-the-european-association-of-japanese-studies-visual-culture-and-postcard-research-papers/] And https://icu.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/4503/files/ACS44_01Steele.pdfThis item, a souvenir from Japan from between the wars (circa 1923) was brought home to Research, Victoria by Bill Teagle who was serving in the Royal Australian Navy (1919-1945). Bill Teagle's sister Violet Amelda Teagle had married Theodore (Curly) Feldbauer in 1933. Bill's brother-in-law Curly was taken as a Prisoner of War by the Japanese and died at Sandakan in March 1945. The family did not learn of Curly’s death till months later and Bill's sister, Violet, herself could never forgive the Japanese for what happened to Curly. Curly is remembered on the Eltham Roll of Honour Board and his son, Albert Feldbauer (Bill’s nephew and youngest child of the children of the soldier fathers attending a school in the district), was given the honour of turning the first sod for the Eltham War Memorial Infant Welfare Centre Building. Despite this, the family maintained this cherished souvenir from a time of previous foreign friendship with Japan. The item was possibly given by Bill Teagle to his sister Margaret Rose (formerly Ingram) who later married Richard Edward (Eddie) Fielding in early 1948. (Eddie had been engaged to someone else before he went to war, but his fiancée broke it off before his return to Australia.) It was cared for by the Teagle/Fielding family for approximately one hundred years. It is of particular significance given the family's connection to the Eltham War Memorial and the significance of that memorial to the local community and represents that despite the horrors of war, former friends then foes can become friends again.tom fielding collection, japanese postcard, postcard, 1923, great kanto earthquake, japan, tokyo, yokohama