The first Western circus to visit Japan came to Yokohama in 1864.
...but local sight-seeing expeditions were popular, here, near Kanagawa, the original treaty city.
View sight-seeing in Edo
Boomtown, the Story:
International Perspective
A woman on horseback was an astonishing sight in Japan, where only warriors rode.
Travel outside Yokohama was restricted...
As the Japanese world view grew, curiosity about the foreigners’ home cities was fed with wildly fanciful depictions of cities like Washington, DC.
View other foreign cities.
The text on this print celebrates America’s wealth, power, and commercial and technological superiority.
The Japanese were quick to emulate foreign technology and soon developed their own proficiency.
The pastiche captures the spirit of enthusiasm for modern inventions that overtook Japan early in the Meiji period (1868–1912).
With its grand composition that recalls the vast 1860 harbor views with which this story began, Hiroshige II’s 1874 print encapsulates the new era resulting from the opening of Japan’s doors.
Rather than document Tokyo in 1870, Yoshitora’s print celebrates the changes that were transforming Japan.
The Shogunate was ended and the Emperor returned to power, moving from Kyoto to Tokyo.
With a new policy, Japan would enter the 20th century a modern nation.
Prints are gifts of Ambassador William and Florence Leonhart, reproduced courtesy
of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC.
“Yokohama Boomtown” Massachusetts Institute of Technology © 2008 Visualizing Cultures
A Project of Professors John W. Dower and Shigeru Miyagawa
Based on the catalogue of the 1990 exhibition at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery,
Smithsonian Institution, Yokohama: Prints from 19th-Century Japan,
by Ann Yonemura. © 1990 Smithsonian Institution
On viewing images from the historical record: click here.
Design and production by Ellen Sebring, Scott Shunk, and Andrew Burstein
