Imaging Aliens 1859-1959, Part I: American Traders in Yokohama Bay, 1859

JF Ptak Science Books    Post 1832

Following hundreds of years of intrigue and shadowy majesty, of imagined life and legend, the Japanese finally allowed its transformation to take place, opening itself to trade and other permissibles with the rest of the world.  It was the beginning of massive cultural, industrial and scientific cross-fertilization, ending centuries of isolation and self-sustained empire--and which basically took six years to occur.  The change started with the efforts of the U.S. government and its liaison in Commodore Matthew Perry, establishing diplomatic and trade relations with Japan via Perry’s expedition there in 1853. By 1859* the transformation was very well underway, with Yokohama—as one of the major trading ports in Japan—being what former US

Ambassador to Japan William Leonhart called "the microcosm of Japanese modernization”, and the port opened for trader with the foreigners.  Japanese artists responded to this influx of exceptionally different people with the Yokohama-e school of woodblock illustration—these artists were primarily from the Utagawa school, and worked illustrating the controlled invasion of their country for three decades, producing some 800 prints. 

 

I like the idea of microcosms. Actually I like the detail within microcosms—sometimes, admittedly, the microcosms just don’t work, though their elements sometimes do. 

 

The Yokohama-e school of  Japanese illustration was the pollination zone for the distribution of Japanese interpretations of these new cultures coming to their country.  They are a beautiful mix of the old (the very old) and the forces that were rubbing up against that antiquity, the old reacting to something brand new, images never seen before. 

 

And in all of this beauty of newness, and all of the observations of never-before-seen rituals, and uniforms, and ships, and people, the thing that I have latched onto like a bad cold from a kindergartener is the American flag—and actually, the field of blue and the stars of the American flag.  For some reason the blue field is almost, always, tiny; and I’ve no idea why.  But I just love it—the flag looks big and billowy and alive, and it has that tiny blue space.  

 

*1859 was a very big year in the history of science:  it saw the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, and also the creation of Bunsen and Kirchhoff’s spectrum analysis.  A monumental year for the development of insight and vision.  

 

Reading:

  Philadelphia Museum of Art, Foreigners in Japan, Yokohama and Related Woodcuts in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1972.

  Rijksmuseum, The Age of Yoshitoshi, Japanese Prints from the Meiji and Taishō periods, Nagasaki, Yokohama, and Kamigata prints, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 1990.

  Yonemura, Ann, Yokohama Japan, Prints from Nineteenth-century , Washington, D.C., Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, 1990.[This is he book from which I made these scans, and a show that I saw and still vividly remember.]

Artists:

The most prolific artists working in this genre were Utagawa Yoshitora, Utagawa Yoshikazu, Utagawa Sadahide, Utagawa Yoshiiku, Utagawa Yoshimori, Utagawa Hiroshige II, Utagawa Hiroshige III, Utagawa Yoshitoyo, and Utagawa Yoshitomi.

Comments

[Charles]

You might be interested in similar artworks and detailed analysis at the MIT website "Black Ships & Samurai."

http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/black_ships_and_samurai/index.html

It was created by Pulitzer Prize winning historian John Dower for his class "Visualizing Culture." It caused some considerable controversy when it was released, Dower's wikipedia bio goes into some of the details.