Accurate Depiction of the Foreign Legation on the Aji River in Osaka (Naniwa Ajikawa gaikokukan shinsha no zu)

This 1868 Museum of Fine Arts Boston color woodblock print by Hasegawa Sadanobu II — at this date still signing as Konobu — documents the foreign legation buildings established along the Aji River in Osaka in the first months of the Meiji Restoration. The print belongs to the kaika-e (civilization-and-enlightenment pictures) genre in which Sadanobu II specialized during his three-year residence in nearby Kobe (1867-1870), a body of work that records the architectural and social transformation of the Kansai treaty ports under the impact of Western trade and diplomacy. Triptych or single-sheet kaika-e of this period typically combine an axonometric architectural rendering of the foreign-style buildings with carefully observed figural staffage of Western men in top hats and frock coats, Japanese officials in formal dress, ricksaws, sedan chairs, and bystanders, all set against the maritime traffic of the Aji River estuary. The composition documents the moment when Osaka, previously closed to direct foreign contact, became a treaty port in 1868 and acquired the foreign settlement (gaikoku kyoryūchi) on the Aji River whose layout this print preserves. The MFA copy entered the collection through the museum's strong early-twentieth-century Japanese print holdings (sc166924) and ranks among the most informative single-image documents of early-Meiji Osaka.