Photos of Japan's old capital with no high-rises and a kimono-clad samurai with a stern look are part of a rare collection being exhibited at a museum in Tokyo, shedding light on the early days of the country's modernization in the late 19th century.

The exhibits showing people and landscapes in a modernizing Japan some 150 years ago are "very real," said Keishi Mitsui, curator of the event entitled Dawn of Japanese Photography: The Anthology at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum.

"With the help of photography we can see our ancestors really carried katana swords and had chonmage topknots. It is the reality we cannot face through novels or paintings," Mitsui said.

The museum in the capital's Ebisu area showcases some 370 original prints with some exhibited throughout the event from March 7 to May 7 and others shown only for part of the period.

It plans to give foreign residents and tourists an English guided tour on April 13 and 14 to help them learn how photographers at the time tried to let the West know about Japan through the Daguerreotype imagery technology unveiled in France in 1839.

Freelance writer Alice Gordenker, who will guide visitors during the events, said she hoped the tour will be a good opportunity for foreigners in Japan to "learn more about where they live."

Most of the displayed photos were taken in the second half of the 19th century when Japan ended the "sakoku" isolation policy in the Edo Era and began introducing various systems and culture from the West through the Meiji Restoration in 1868.

Mitsui said the museum collected the photos after contacting nearly 8,000 organizations nationwide over the past 10 years.

"Even through something as small and unimportant as a gallery talk, we might get new information out to the rest of the world that will be significant," Gordenker said.

"I wish it would be possible to do something similar internationally, because I know that there are lots of museums outside of Japan that hold Japanese photographs and they don't know what they are," Gordenker said, adding, "Japanese scholars aren't aware of them."

The producers of the photos on display are Japanese and foreign, including Eliphalet Brown Jr. who arrived in Japan in 1854 as part of the U.S. delegation led by Matthew Perry and British photographer Felice Beato.

Brown is known for the 1854 Portrait of Tanaka Mitsuyoshi, which is designated by Japanese authorities as an Important Cultural Property as it was the oldest photograph of a Japanese person to be taken in Japan.

An 1869 portrait of samurai Hijikata Toshizo with Western hairstyle and clothing, which was taken by Japanese photographer Tamoto Kenzo, and Panorama of Edo from Atagoyama Hill, a five-piece photo taken by Beato around 1863, are also drawing the attention of many visitors.

The portraits of Tanaka and Hijikata will be exhibited from April 11 and April 25, respectively, according to the museum.