Yokohama-e

Yokohama-e (literally “Yokohama pictures”) are ukiyo-e Japanese woodblock prints depicting foreigners and scenes of Yokohama. In 1859, the port of Yokohama was opened to foreigners, and ukiyo-e artists, primarily of the Utagawa school, produced more than 800 different woodblock prints in response to a general curiosity about these strangers. The production of Yokohama-e ceased in the 1880s.

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.

Gallery

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  Woodblock print by Utagawa Yoshitora of a Frenchman with a geisha, 1861

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  First steam train leaving Yokohama, triptych by Utagawa Kunisada II

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  Japanese print shows American naturalist and ornithologist John James Audubon (1785-1851) discovering that his work was eaten by a rat, unsigned

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  Sumo wrestler throwing a foreigner at Yokohama by Utagawa Yoshifuji, 1861

References

• Lane, Richard. (1978). Images from the Floating World, The Japanese Print, Oxford, Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780192114471; OCLC 5246796
• Newland, Amy Reigle. (2005). Hotei Encyclopedia of Japanese Woodblock Prints, Amsterdam, Hotei. ISBN 9789074822657; OCLC 61666175
• 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, Prints from Nineteenth-century Japan, Washington, D.C., Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, 1990.

External links

• Japan and the West: Artistic Cross-Fertilization, at the Library of Congress, including examples of Yokohama-e