Japanese merchants hastily moved from Edo to participate in Yokohama trade...
...providing food and basic necessities of daily life in Yokohama.
Sadahide The Observer:
Japanese District
The Japanese business district had numerous shops along main street Honcho-dori...
...and vastly outnumbered the foreign community.
The distinctive trademark of Mitsui marks this shop.
The wealthiest merchant house of this period...
...it specialized in dry goods, money lending and exchange. Today, Mitsui is Japan’s second largest general trading company.
The white robes worn by the candy vendors look Korean...
A dog holding a fish is chased through the busy street.
Souvenirs like the Yokohama Prints and books were wildly popular with travelers passing along the Tokaido Highway...
...sold in shops unshuttered for the day’s trade.
...these are the only foreign costumes in the scene.
Perspective, introduced from European art in the 18th century, is used to render the wide boulevard.
A tame boar ambles near a heavily laden peddler’s cart. Working men wear practical cotton indigo-dyed clothing.
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
