Steam Train at Takanawa in Tokyo

This triptych of the Takanawa steam train belongs to the small but historically central group of Ikkei's prints documenting the new Meiji railway, and is one of the earliest contemporary depictions of the Tokyo-Yokohama line that opened on 14 October 1872 and inaugurated railway transport in Japan. The line ran along the Tokyo Bay shore between the new Shimbashi terminus in central Tokyo and the foreign settlement at Yokohama, with the Takanawa section running on a specially constructed embankment offshore from the existing coastal road. Ikkei renders the steam train as a long horizontal band of locomotive and carriages crossing the central panel, with elaborate plumes of steam rising into the sky and Japanese figures in mixed Western and traditional dress watching from the foreground while sail-rigged fishing boats occupy the bay beyond. The composition uses the full triptych width to emphasize the train's horizontal extension and the linearity of the new transport corridor, and the saturated aniline reds of the locomotive and the flag-flying carriages give the image its high early-Meiji color register. The print is held in the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco at the Legion of Honor (accession 1968.13.24) and is one of the principal ukiyo-e documents of the inauguration of Japanese railway transport.