This article focuses on the works of Tsuboi Shōgorō, one of the first modern Japanese anthropologists, to examine what the making of racial type meant in the Japanese empire, given that establishing objective type images is of importance in observing other Asian nations as subject of study. Among other things, in the modern discipline of Anthropology, these racial and ethnic type images are often treated and assumed as 'objective material,' and yet this paper seeks to investigate the ways in which these seemingly objective images are often constructed on the basis of stereotypes, prejudices and political views. There are a variety of the existing studies on Tsuboi and Japan's modern anthropology, but they have mostly focused on textual analysis and the historical aspect of modern Japanese anthropology. This study thus moves beyond them and is more concerned with the visual techniques utilized by Tsuboi. This article therefore pays more attention to the composite photography techniques that Tsuboi experimented. Assuming that the composite photography technology might be crucial in linking visual images and race and ethnicity, this paper explores how the composite photography techniques were used in classifying and categorizing racial and ethnic group. Then this study further examines how the racial type images were re-contextualized and displayed at the exhibition held at the Tokyo imperial university.