These 19th century images show what Japanese locals really thought of American tourists
The stereotype tables are turned
Most Americans are familiar with the 1980s stereotype of Japanese tourists. Busloads of confusion-prone, camera-toting visitors on hurried tours of our national landmarks, snapping photos and departing as quickly as they arrived. But only a century earlier it was Japanese locals who winced as boatloads of American travelers awkwardly disembarked on their turf. Their good humored response was to poke fun through a new form of art called Yokohama-e.
Japan had closed its ports to foreign trade in 1639 after European traders kept trying to convert its people to Catholicism. So when the American Navy showed up in 1852 demanding to start a relationship, of course the shogunate was like, “Nah.” But persistence pays, and a couple years later, with the help of some strategic gunboat diplomacy, the Kanagawa Treaty was signed and the doors were open. Kinda.
As per the terms of the treaty, foreigners were confined to the then small fishing village of Yokohama and all trade was conducted under a strict government monopoly.
Yokohama-e, or “Yokohama pictures,” are a subset of the ukiyo-e woodblock prints popular in Japan at the time. Specifically, yokohama-e depict foreigners living in freshly cosmopolitan Yokohama. Japanese artists like Utagawa Yoshitora were curious about the newcomers, and used their skills to depict the strange, sometimes comical exploits of these strangers washed ashore.
Look back at dominant European depictions from the colonial era, however, and these colorful prints stand out as radical visual resistance to the mounting pressure of outside culture. It’s a subversive tradition which would continue in 20th century Japanese photography—a Western medium repurposed in critical response to Westernization.
