Sadahide’s “Picture of Western Traders at Yokohama...” captures the drama of the newly-opened port. His passion for personal observation conveys a vivid immediacy.
It is said that he dropped his brush into the bay while sketching aboard a small boat and borrowed a pencil from a foreigner to complete his drawing.
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We can follow the birth and growth of the treaty-port city through the eyes of this artist who was on the scene at the time.
Sadahide The Observer:
Yokohama Harbor
Sadahide (sa-dah-hee-day) was one of the few artists who drew Yokohama from direct observation.
...while a clerk takes notes.
Cargo is carried up the gangplank by workers of various nationalities...
Women gaze down upon the scene from the windows of the French vessel...
...because of intense curiousity, they were portrayed in far greater numbers than were really there.
...and sailors fly like acrobats in the rigging of the British sailing ship.
Ships from all five nations are represented amidst an excitement the long-isolated Japanese felt toward the foreigners.
Lively waves nip at the bow of the Russian vessel..
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
