Other Asian Peoples

This print belongs to a series of prints by the artist Utagawa Yoshiiku (歌川 芳幾), two of which still exsist today. It is unknown if more prints were in the series and have yet to be idetified or survived past the Edo Period. In this print four men are identified by their region of origin, a Ryukyu man, and Chosen (Korean) man, an Ainu man, and a man identified as being in the Konron Kingdom (a semi-mythical land in Southeast Asia). The uniqueness of this print is that four Asian neighbors are depicted, rather than Westerns. This print also relfects the heirachy that the Tokugawan govnerment assigned to their neighbhors, with the Ryukyu and Chosen man being according more dignty than the Ainu ahd Konron man below them. Importantly the Ainu man is depicted with no shoes and unkempt hair, symbols of barbarity in Japan at the time of the prints production. 

This print identifies the foreignness of the figures through their costume and skin color. The Siamese man’s skin is depicted as very dark while the Chinese man has orange/red shading on his face. This technique of shading was generally reserved for foreigners in Yokohama-e, and while occasionally Japanese men’s faces were shaded this way, no Japanese women had shading on their face. There is a tradition in Japan of beautiful women being represented as having fair white skin. The architecture to the right of the print, white washed with glass windows suggest this scene is taking place in the Western show or residental area of Yokohama.

This image shows two Chinese ladies, one dancing and other playing an instrument. Like representations of beautiful Japanese women their skin has no shading and their clothing and hair styles are elaborate. However the long oval faces and necks of these women seem to suggest something exotic or foreign, they are certainly do not have the same type of body as Japanese women do in other woodblock prints.

This triptych by Utagawa Sadahide (歌川 貞秀) shows a merchants shop or trade room in the port of Yokohama. Yokohama had established neighborhoods for the trading of goods between foreign merchants and their Japanese buyers, as well as shops for Westerns to purchase Japanese products. While published as a set triptychs it is far from guaranteed the three prints were purchased at the same time or stayed together through the years. This is often why you will see triptychs with different levels of fading or damage in the same group. This set however, appears to be fairly uniform in color fading and damage. 

This print, titled Goods for Sale shows and example of the types of goods available to Japanese customers in the port of Yokohama and other import shops around the country. In this picture a large potted coral is displayed, coral was often associated with people from Southeast Asian, such as the Konron Kingdom in the earlier print. The frame seems to hold either a picture of a European woman, perhaps selling headdresses and clothing like hers or the item is meant to represent a European style mirror. Below the frame is some sort of hanging bead or decoration, also likely an imported item.

 While the Chinese were well known in Japan before the opening of the port of Yokohama, as they had a settlement in Nagasaki and before that Japanese rulers had foreign relations with the Chinese Kingdom, Yokohama-e are some of the first representations of Chinese people in Japan. Chinese people are generally depicted as part of the Qing court, identified by the queues and style of robes. The light blue shading around the queue, which represents the shaved area of the head, was also often used on the faces of European men to represented shaved facial hair.

This print again associates a Southeast Asian person with coral as an export good. This man is identified as a South Sea Islander, give him a vague area of origin, but no nationality. This man also holds a pipe, suggesting that this man, or his region, had been introduced to smoking tobacco. Japan was originally introduced to tobacco from the Portuguese traders and missionaries in the mid-sixteenth century, and continued to be imported though Nagasaki after the expulsion of Christians. In fact, many popular prints and literature feature Japanese peoples smoking tobacco as a way of showing social status and wealth. 

This print by Utagawa Yoshikazu (歌川 由一) depicts a Chinese couple, much like the earlier print of a Prussian couple. In this print the man is again identified as Qing Chinese through his queue and robe style, while the woman appear much closer to depictions of Japanese women of the time. However the woman’s parasol appears different than those depicted with Japanese woman, and her top robe is much shorter than those in Edo Japan.