Nearly 1,850 picture postcards, bromides, etc. from the Kaigetsu Shoya collection have been digitized and made publicly available online. The images, chiefly depicting Kabuki actors, are from the late Meiji through Showa periods.

Kaigetsu Shoya picture postcards database:
https://www.dh-jac.net/db/butai-photo/search_kgt.php

The images can also be viewed via the Special Event Photographs portal site:
https://www.dh-jac.net/db/butai-photo/search_portal.php

This collection focuses primarily on photographs of individual actors. One can search by the actor's name and ordinal numbers, play titles, date of the photograph, and other search terms.

This is an important collection, containing not only typical Kabuki picture postcards, but also picture postcards with illustrations of actors' faces, actors from smaller (koshibai) theatres, the fukuro wrappers that picture postcards or bromides were originally sold in (some featuring the name of the shop), and other materials.

A specially made album, "Hyakumenso ehagaki cho," collecting one hundred images from the late Meiji period to the early Taisho period, is also included in this collection. Made by the Ginza Kamigata-ya, it consists of picture postcards of enlarged images of actors' faces, and includes actresses from the Imperial Theatre (Teikoku gekijo), Shinpa actors, and others alongside those from Kabuki.

Accurate metadata will continue to be added for this collection going forward. Please let us know if you notice any errors or missing information. Thank you very much for your cooperation.