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Kita Amerika Gasshūkoku Title: The United States of North America Artist: Yoshikazu (fl. ca. 1850-70) 1861 Format: Woodblock print Medium: Ink and color on paper Dimensions: 34.8 x23.9 cm (13 3/4 x9 3/8 in.) Source: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution A frame embellished with an American flag surrounds the title of this print. The text by Kanagaki Robun (1829-1894) celebrates America's wealth, power, and commercial and technological superiority. Yoshikazu's print illustrates a man holding a pocket watch gazed upon by a woman operating a sewing machine; a laundry iron rests on the table nearby. Representing the advanced technology of the United States in the mid nineteenth-century, the sewing machine had first appeared in a print by Yoshikazu published in 1860. [Adapted from Ann Yonemura, Yokohama: Prints from Nineteenth-Century Japan] Visualizing Cultures image number: Y0169 Keywords: United States, Americans, timepieces, sewing machine, Westerners, Kanagaki Robun |
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