Imperial portraits
In the pre-modern and early modern periods, portraits of the Emperor were only painted posthumously, were only used for memorial purposes and the like, and were only visible to those few who (by virtue of lineage, position, or rank) would have had access to the emperor in life. However, in the Meiji period through the early 1940s, images of the emperor were widely distributed throughout society, perhaps most famously in being posted in public school classrooms, and formed a central element of an Emperor-centered national(ist) ideology. In the post-war period, the emperor has been more visible in a variety of ways, being seen in photographs and video in news media and elsewhere.
Pre-Modern through Tokugawa period
In the medieval period, emperors were typically depicted with beard and mustache, as symbols of masculinity. The last pre-modern monarch to be depicted in this way, however, was Emperor Go-Yôzei (r. 1589-1611), and in the Edo period, maintaining a clean-shaven face became a relatively standard element of tidy appearances for men of all ranks of society (from the emperor down to the villagers).[1]
Meiji Period
The Ministry of Education began to send images of the Meiji Emperor to public schools across the country in the 1880s, and it's believed that by 1897 or so, there was one in every elementary school across Japan. The official documents accompanying these portraits used terminology normally associated with the actual presence of the emperor, including terms such as "departure of the imperial conveyance" (gohatsuren) as the images left Tokyo, and "arrival of the Emperor" (chakugyo), as they were received at schools.[2]
The last official photographs of the Meiji Emperor were taken in 1872 and 1873, by Uchida Kuichi; after that, the Emperor is said to have refused to have his picture taken (or, otherwise, the Imperial Household Ministry or other governmental managers of Imperial & national ideology and propaganda had it no longer take place). For this reason, many of the most famous or well-known images of the Meiji Emperor today, though perhaps widely mistakenly believed to be photographs, are in fact drawings. One such portrait was sketched by Edoardo Chiossone in 1888. The yôga painter Takahashi Yuichi was also able to paint a portrait of the emperor, in 1880.[3]
