“Strange” and “new” are relative terms, as a fascinating series of Japanese woodcuts unearthed by the Public Domain Review handily reminds us.
Inspired by the dress and habits of visiting Americans, artists in 1850s Japan once dedicated themselves with an ethnographic intensity to the study of exotic Western newcomers. Today, the artwork provides Americans with a novel perspective on their ancestors, described in portrait titles like People of the Barbarian Nations – Americans,andAmericans’ Love for Children.
This particular genre of woodcut is known as Yokohama-e, and was produced in the small fishing village of Yokohama, today one of Japan’s most international cities. Yokohama was one of the first ports that Japan opened to foreign trade, at the insistence of the American government. The US made several failed attempts to get Japan’s attention throughout the early 19th century before finally forcing Japan out of isolation in 1854.
The images below were retrieved from the digital archives of the US Library of Congress.
“Yokohama meishō benten: Amerikajin” (Famous places in Yokohama: Americans.)A carriage ride along the shoreline in Yokohama, in “Yokohama kyūjitsu Amerikajin yūkō” (Americans enjoying Sunday in Yokohama).(Sadahide Utagawa)A woman holds a parasol and a man smokes a cigar in “Shōsha – Amerikajin” (True picture of Americans.) Yoshikazu Utagawa.Women in Western dress riding sidesaddle in “Gokakoku no uchi – Amerikajin” (People of the five nations – Americans). (Utagawa, Yoshitora)An American couple in “Bankoku zukushi – Amerikajin” (About foreign lands – Americans). (Yoshitora Utagawa).“Bankoku jinbutsu zue – Amerikajin” (People of the barbarian nations – Americans). (Yoshitsuya Utagawa)An American couple conversing with Japanese translation in the text, in “Amerikajin – bango wakai” (Americans – Japanese translations of barbaric languages). (Yoshitora Utagawa)An American man holding a glass and a Japanese courtesan holding a bottle in “Amerikajin yuko sakamori” (American enjoying himself). (Yoshitora Utagawa)“Amerikajin yūgyō” (Americans taking a stroll). (Yoshifuji Utagawa)A husband stands nearby while his wife breast-feeds an infant in “Amerikajin no zu” (Portrait of Americans). (Yoshitora Utagawa)Two American men baking in “Amerikajin no zu – pansei nokamato” (Portrait of Americans – bread making). (Yoshikazu Utagawa)A mother and child with a Japanese manservant leaving for a walk, in “Amerikajin kodomo o aisu zu” (Picture of Americans’ love for children). (Yoshitoyo Utagawa)(Yoshikazu Utagawa)
A Princeton PhD, was a U.S. diplomat for over 20 years, mostly in Central/Eastern Europe, and was promoted to the Senior Foreign Service in 1997. After leaving the State Department in 2003 to express strong reservations about the planned U.S. invasion of Iraq, he shared ideas with Georgetown University students on the tension between propaganda and public diplomacy. He has given talks on "E Pluribus Unum? What Keeps the United States United" to participants in the "Open World" program. Among Brown’s many articles is his latest piece, “Janus-Faced Public Diplomacy: Creel and Lippmann During the Great War,” now online. He is the compiler (with S. Grant) of The Russian Empire and the USSR: A Guide to Manuscripts and Archival Materials in the United States (also online). In the past century, he served as an editor/translator of a joint U.S.-Soviet publication of archival materials, The United States and Russia: The Beginning of Relations,1765-1815. His approach to "scholarly" aspirations is poetically summarized by Goethe: "Gray, my friend, is every theory, but green is the tree of life."
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