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Life in Treaty Port China and Japan pp 247–267Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

The Arrival of the “Modern” West in Yokohama: Images of the Japanese Experience, 1859–1899

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Abstract

As the 150th anniversary of the opening of Japan’s treaty ports is celebrated by its citizens, it is appropriate that we also acknowledge the important contribution made by the treaty ports to Japan’s economic development and, more broadly, modernisation. My research aims to uncover the agents and mechanisms, individual and institutional, involved in the transmission of ideas and technology between the newly opened Japan and the industrialised West. In the following study, I would particularly like to discuss some of the most significant images and visual constructs of the treaty ports—the woodblock prints of Yokohama (Yokohama-e)—with their remarkable detail of unprecedented interactions and cooperation, and introduce the concept of wakon yōsai, which is central to understanding Japan’s historic modernisation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For example, regarding the treaty port trade in precious metals, see Simon James Bytheway and Martha Chaiklin, “Reconsidering the Yokohama “Gold Rush” of 1859”, in Journal of World History, 27:2 (June 2016), pp. 281–301.

  2. 2.

    Masahide Asahi, Kaika no Yokohama-e [Pictures of the opening of Yokohama] (Tokyo: Dezainsha, 1953), and Hiroshi Higuchi (ed.), Bakumatsu Meiji no ukiyoe shusei [A compilation of ukiyo-e from the Bakumatsu and Meiji eras] (Tokyo: Mitoshoya, 1955). Regrettably, subsequent generations have failed to take an active interest in the promotion and understanding of Yokohama-e and, more generally, Meiji-era ukiyo-e. For example, of the 364 titles listed under “ukiyo-e” at the National Diet Library in Tokyo, only Asahi’s work has Yokohama-e in its title. The seemingly bizarre emotional fear and repugnance engendered by these woodblock prints in “post-modern” Japanese society is most often politely ignored by social scientists today.

  3. 3.

    Julia Meech-Pekarik , The World of the Meiji Print: Impressions on a New Civilization (New York: Weatherhill, 1986). Some books (and collections) of ukiyo-e ignore Meiji-era ukiyo-e altogether, as if the popular art of ukiyo-e ends upon contact with the Westerner in the 1850s. For example, there is often no mention (and no images!) of Japan’s forced opening in major works published by major institutions, as exemplified by Lawrence Smith (ed.), Ukiyo-e: Images of Unknown Japan (London: British Museum, 1988).

  4. 4.

    Museum of Fine Arts [MFA], Boston, Japan at the Dawn of the Modern Age: Woodblock Prints from the Meiji Era, 1968–1912 (Boston: MFA Publications, 2001).

  5. 5.

    Barry Till, Japan Awakens: Woodblock Prints from the Meiji Era, 1968–1912 (Portland: Pomegranate, 2008).

  6. 6.

    Ann Yonemura , Yokohama: Prints from Nineteenth-Century Japan (Washington, DC: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993).

  7. 7.

    Visualizing Culture, “Asia in the Modern World: Images and Representations” (owc.mit.edu, accessed 3/7/17).

  8. 8.

    For example, “reading art as text” may work for historians, but artists intentionally use visual art to reach those areas that rhetoric and prose cannot easily penetrate.

  9. 9.

    See Rebecca Salter, Japanese Popular Prints: from Votive Slips to Playing Cards (London: A & C Black, 2006), pp. 13–192.

  10. 10.

    Donald Jenkins, “The Roots of Ukiyo-e: Its Beginnings to the Mid-eighteenth Century”, in Amy Reigle Newland (ed.), The Hotei Encyclopaedia of Japanese Woodblock Prints (Amsterdam: Hotei, 2005), pp. 45–74.

  11. 11.

    Martha Chaiklin, “Nagasaki-e”, in Amy Reigle Newland (ed.), The Hotei Encyclopaedia of Japanese Woodblock Prints (Amsterdam: Hotei, 2005), p. 225.

  12. 12.

    Martha Chaiklin, “Nagasaki-e”, in Amy Reigle Newland (ed.), The Hotei Encyclopaedia of Japanese Woodblock Prints (Amsterdam: Hotei, 2005), pp. 225–228, and Helen Merritt, “Woodblock Prints in the Meiji Era”, in Amy Reigle Newland (ed.), The Hotei Encyclopaedia of Japanese Woodblock Prints (Amsterdam: Hotei, 2005), p. 245.

  13. 13.

    Stephan Tanaka, New Times in Modern Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 7.

  14. 14.

    Julia Meech -Pekarik , The World of the Meiji Print: Impressions on a New Civilization (New York: Weatherhill, 1986), p. xv.

  15. 15.

    The story of how pictures of Yokohama and the Meiji era changed from being popular souvenirs to becoming a “much despised” and marginalised art form in Japan has yet to be fully explained, but for an introduction, see Julia Meech-Pekarik , The World of the Meiji Print: Impressions on a New Civilization (New York: Weatherhill, 1986), p. xv, and Lawrence Smith (ed.), Ukiyo-e: Images of Unknown Japan (London: British Museum, 1988), p. 21. In order for Japanese people to become “modern,” one of the first things that had to be civilised, or at least be seen to be Westernised, was native attitudes themselves, particularly towards the body, nakedness, mixed bathing, erotica, and sexuality. Common ukiyo-e themes, such as startling images of “spring pictures” (shunga) and licensed prostitution (which ranges from being gently risqué to erotic, or even pornographic), clashed against the moral righteousness and general prudishness of Victorian attitudes. That most valuable ukiyo-e collections, and almost all Yokohama-e collections, are held outside Japan today suggests that the popular (Edo) art of ukiyo-e sat uncomfortably with the progressive notion of a newly modernising Japan. See Lawrence Smith (ed.), Ukiyo-e: Images of Unknown Japan (London: British Museum, 1988), pp. 19–21.

  16. 16.

    For a detailed examination of contemporary Japanese culture, see the authoritative Kunio Yanagita, Japanese Manners and Customs in the Meiji Era (Ƭbunsha, 1957), and the more recent Daikichi Irokawa, The Culture of the Meiji Period (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985).

  17. 17.

    Julia Meech-Pekarik , The World of the Meiji Print: Impressions on a New Civilization (New York: Weatherhill, 1986), plate 16, and Ann Yonemura , Yokohama: Prints from Nineteenth-Century Japan (Washington, DC: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), pp. 72–73.

  18. 18.

    Julia Meech-Pekarik , The World of the Meiji Print: Impressions on a New Civilization (New York: Weatherhill, 1986), p. 99.

  19. 19.

    Julia Meech-Pekarik , The World of the Meiji Print: Impressions on a New Civilization (New York: Weatherhill, 1986), p. 99.

  20. 20.

    Katherine L. Blood, “Ukiyo-e and its Orbit: the Library of Congress Collections in Context”, in Sandy Kita, Lawrence E. Marceau, Katherine L. Blood, and James Douglas Farquhar (eds.), Floating World of Ukiyo-e: Shadows, Dreams and Substance (Washington, DC: Harry N. Abrams with Library of Congress, 2001), p. 130.

  21. 21.

    Ann Yonemura , Yokohama: Prints from Nineteenth-Century Japan (Washington, DC: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), pp. 178–179.

  22. 22.

    Asian Art Museum of San Francisco [AAM-SF], Nagasaki and Yokohama Prints from the Richard Gump Collection (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1981), p. 4, Helen Merritt and Shigeru Oikawa, “Yokohama-e”, in Amy Reigle Newland (ed.), The Hotei Encyclopaedia of Japanese Woodblock Prints (Amsterdam: Hotei, 2005), p. 267, and Rebecca Salter, Japanese Popular Prints: from Votive Slips to Playing Cards (London: A & C Black, 2006), pp. 83–87.

  23. 23.

    Asian Art Museum of San Francisco [AAM-SF], Nagasaki and Yokohama Prints from the Richard Gump Collection (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1981), p. 34.

  24. 24.

    Simon James Bytheway, Investing Japan: Foreign Capital, Monetary Standards, and Economic Development, 1859–2011 (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2014), pp. 89–90. Some of the locomotives, machinery, and paraphernalia associated with the original Yokohama–Tokyo railway line may still be viewed at Meiji Mura Museum, near Nagoya.

  25. 25.

    Dallas Finn , Meiji Revisited: the Sites of Victorian Japan (New York: Weatherhill, 1995), pp. 45–50, Julia Meech-Pekarik , The World of the Meiji Print: Impressions on a New Civilization (New York: Weatherhill, 1986), pp. 82–88, and Ann Yonemura , Yokohama: Prints from Nineteenth-Century Japan (Washington, DC: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), p. 176.

  26. 26.

    See Naotaka Hirota, The Lure of Japan’s Railways (Tokyo: Japan Times, 1969), and Steven J. Ericson, The Sound of the Whistle: Railroads and the State in Meiji Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 1996).

  27. 27.

    Ann Yonemura , Yokohama: Prints from Nineteenth-Century Japan (Washington, DC: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), p. 184.

  28. 28.

    Asian Art Museum of San Francisco [AAM-SF], Nagasaki and Yokohama Prints from the Richard Gump Collection (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1981), pp. 36–37, and Museum of Fine Arts [MFA], Boston, Japan at the Dawn of the Modern Age: Woodblock Prints from the Meiji Era, 1968–1912 (Boston: MFA Publications, 2001), p. 50.

  29. 29.

    Margarita Winkel, “Photography and Ukiyo-e Prints”, in Amy Reigle Newland (ed.), The Hotei Encyclopaedia of Japanese Woodblock Prints (Amsterdam: Hotei, 2005), pp. 270–272.

  30. 30.

    Dallas Finn , Meiji Revisited: the Sites of Victorian Japan (New York: Weatherhill, 1995), p. 145.

  31. 31.

    Museum of Fine Arts [MFA], Boston, Japan at the Dawn of the Modern Age: Woodblock Prints from the Meiji Era, 1968–1912 (Boston: MFA Publications, 2001), p. 48.

  32. 32.

    Julia Meech-Pekarik , The World of the Meiji Print: Impressions on a New Civilization (New York: Weatherhill, 1986), p. xv.

  33. 33.

    P.F. Kornicki, “The Publishing Trade”, in Amy Reigle Newland (ed.), The Hotei Encyclopaedia of Japanese Woodblock Prints (Amsterdam: Hotei, 2005), pp. 312–314, and Sarah E. Thompson, “Censorship and Ukiyo-e Prints”, in Amy Reigle Newland (ed.), The Hotei Encyclopaedia of Japanese Woodblock Prints (Amsterdam: Hotei, 2005), p. 322.

  34. 34.

    Helen Merritt, “Woodblock Prints in the Meiji Era”, in Amy Reigle Newland (ed.), The Hotei Encyclopaedia of Japanese Woodblock Prints (Amsterdam: Hotei, 2005), p. 245.

  35. 35.

    Hiroshi Higuchi (ed.), Bakumatsu Meiji no ukiyoe shusei [A compilation of ukiyo-e from the Bakumatsu and Meiji eras] (Tokyo: Mitoshoya, 1955), pp. 20–32.

  36. 36.

    Asian Art Museum of San Francisco [AAM-SF], Nagasaki and Yokohama Prints from the Richard Gump Collection (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1981), pp. 20–21.

  37. 37.

    Looking at “barbarians” in a namban-e picture, a friend said that they looked ridiculous; like “moustachioed meerkats standing to attention in exquisite, silk ponchos.” The rub is that while the ship’s personnel are generally treated with indifference, their ships and their cargoes are presented beautifully with care, and in great detail.

  38. 38.

    Helen Merritt and Shigeru Oikawa, “Yokohama-e”, in Amy Reigle Newland (ed.), The Hotei Encyclopaedia of Japanese Woodblock Prints (Amsterdam: Hotei, 2005), p. 267.

  39. 39.

    Asian Art Museum of San Francisco [AAM-SF], Nagasaki and Yokohama Prints from the Richard Gump Collection (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1981), pp. 18–19, Julia Meech-Pekarik , The World of the Meiji Print: Impressions on a New Civilization (New York: Weatherhill, 1986), p. 23, and Rebecca Salter, Japanese Popular Prints: from Votive Slips to Playing Cards (London: A & C Black, 2006), p. 83.

  40. 40.

    Julia Meech-Pekarik , The World of the Meiji Print: Impressions on a New Civilization (New York: Weatherhill, 1986), p. 229.

  41. 41.

    Akira Tsukahara, “The Opening of Japan and Its Visual Culture”, in Yukiko Shirahara (ed.), Japan Envisions the West: sixteenth–nineteenth Century Japanese Art from Kobe City Museum (Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, 2007), pp. 208–210.

  42. 42.

    Julia Meech-Pekarik , The World of the Meiji Print: Impressions on a New Civilization (New York: Weatherhill, 1986), p. xii.

  43. 43.

    Ann Yonemura , Yokohama: Prints from Nineteenth-Century Japan (Washington, DC: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), pp. 130–159.

  44. 44.

    Ann Yonemura , Yokohama: Prints from Nineteenth-Century Japan (Washington, DC: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), p. 181.

  45. 45.

    Akira Tsukahara, “The Opening of Japan and Its Visual Culture”, in Yukiko Shirahara (ed.), Japan Envisions the West: sixteenth–nineteenth Century Japanese Art from Kobe City Museum (Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, 2007), p. 210.

  46. 46.

    P.F. Kornicki, “The Publishing Trade”, in Amy Reigle Newland (ed.), The Hotei Encyclopaedia of Japanese Woodblock Prints (Amsterdam: Hotei, 2005), pp. 312–314, and Sarah E. Thompson, “Censorship and Ukiyo-e Prints”, in Amy Reigle Newland (ed.), The Hotei Encyclopaedia of Japanese Woodblock Prints (Amsterdam: Hotei, 2005), p. 322.

  47. 47.

    Rebecca Salter, Japanese Popular Prints: from Votive Slips to Playing Cards (London: A & C Black, 2006), p. 202.

  48. 48.

    See Simon James Bytheway and Michael Schiltz, “The dynamics of wakon yōsai (Japanese spirit, Western technology): The paradoxes and challenges of financial policy in an industrializing Japan, 1854–1939”, in D. Bennett, J. Earnest and M. Tanji (eds.), People, Place and Power: Australia and the Asia Pacific (Perth: Black Swan Press, 2009), pp. 57–79.

  49. 49.

    Simon James Bytheway, Nihonkeizai to gaikokushihon 1858–1939 [The Japanese Economy and Foreign Capital: 1858–1939] (Tokyo: Tosui, 2005), p. 185.

  50. 50.

    Lord Redesdale [Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford], A Tragedy in Stone, and Other Papers (London: John Lane & Co., 1912), pp. 128–129.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Commerce, Nihon University, Tokyo, Japan

    Simon James Bytheway

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Donna Brunero

  2. The University of Hull, Kingston upon Hull, United Kingdom

    Stephanie Villalta Puig

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Bytheway, S.J. (2018). The Arrival of the “Modern” West in Yokohama: Images of the Japanese Experience, 1859–1899. In: Brunero, D., Villalta Puig, S. (eds) Life in Treaty Port China and Japan. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7368-7_10

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