Any fan of samurai movies knows the elaborate lengths some productions can go to in order to recreate the look and feel of old Japan, but globetrotting Italian-British photographer Felice Beato (1832 - 1909) actually managed to capture those days on celluloid first-hand. He arrived in Japan in 1863, at the very twilight of the era of the samurai, a time he documented evocatively with a series of hand-colored photographs of subjects like 'kimonos, parasols, baby’s toys, basket sellers, courtesans at rest and a samurai gang ready for action,' as the Guardian lists them in their gallery of Beato's Japanese work.