Adolfo Farsari - Early Years

Early Years

Adolfo Farsari was born in Vicenza, Lombardy-Venetia (then part of the Austrian Empire, now in Italy). He began a career in the Italian military in 1859 but emigrated to the United States in 1863 and, a fervent abolitionist, Farsari served with the Union Army as a New York State Volunteer Cavalry trooper until the end of the American Civil War. He married an American, but the marriage failed and in 1873 he left his wife and two children and moved to Japan.

Based in Yokohama, Farsari formed a partnership with E.A. Sargent. Their firm, Sargent, Farsari & Co., dealt in smokers' supplies, stationery, visiting cards, newspapers, magazines and novels, Japanese and English conversation books, dictionaries, guidebooks, maps, and photographic views of Japan. The creator of these photographs remains unknown, but Farsari was the maker of at least some of the maps, notably of Miyanoshita (in the Hakone resort area) and Yokohama. After his partnership with Sargent ended, the company, now A. Farsari & Co., published successive editions of Keeling's Guide to Japan and Farsari himself wrote and published Japanese Words and Phrases for the Use of Strangers. The firm was among the most prolific publishers of materials to aid travellers, having produced its first guidebook to Japan by July 1880.