Mid-19th Century Japanese Depictions of Westerners

Sketch of a Copperplate Print of the City of Washington , 1861

When Commodore Perry landed on Japan's shores in 1854 he ended 200 years of the Tokugawa shogunate's cultural isolation and other western nations soon followed. The Japanese were curious about the western strangers so Japanese artists set about creating pictures to satisfy their curiosity. The artists used borrowed imagery from secondary sources, such as wood engravings found in Western journals and newspapers.

The English

Woodblock print by Utagawa Yoshitora of a Frenchman with a geisha, 1861

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Via Neatorama