Background, Youth, and Preparation
Ueno Hikoma's family background perhaps provided an early impetus for his eventual career. A number of family members had been portrait painters. Furthermore, he was the son of Ueno Toshinojō (also known as Ueno Shunnojō) (1790–1851), a merchant in the employ of the Shimazu clan who in 1848 imported possibly the first camera in the country, a daguerreotype camera for the Shimazu daimyō, Nariakira.
Ueno Hikoma first studied Chinese classics; then in 1852, not long after his father's death, he entered the Nagasaki Medical College with a view to studying chemistry in order to help him run the family business, dealing in nitre and chintz dyeing. He eventually studied chemistry under the Dutch naval medical officer Johannes L. C. Pompe van Meerdervoort (1829–1908) after the latter's arrival in 1857. Pompe van Meerdervoort, who had a camera and photography manual though little experience as a photographer, also instructed Ueno Hikoma in photography.
It was only after his contact with Swiss photographer Pierre Rossier (1829 – ca. 1890) that Ueno decided to pursue a career as a photographer. Rossier had been commissioned by the firm Negretti and Zambra to photograph in Asia and he worked in Japan from 1859 to 1860. He was only in Nagasaki for a short time, but while there he taught wet-collodion process photography to Ueno, Horie Kuwajirō (1831–1866), Maeda Genzō (1831–1906) and others. Soon after, Ueno's friend Horie bought a wet-plate camera and in 1861 Horie photographed Ueno at work in the Tsu clan's laboratory in Edo (now Tokyo). In 1862 Ueno and Horie co-wrote a textbook titled Shamitsu kyoku hikkei that comprised translated extracts from ten Dutch science manuals and which included an appendix titled Satsueijutsu that described techniques of collodion process photography as well as Nicéphore Niépce's asphalt printing method.
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