Trader showing mirror at Nagasaki

"Trader Showing Mirror at Nagasaki" depicts a scene of cross-cultural commercial exchange in miniature: a trader — likely Portuguese or Dutch — displaying a Western mirror to Japanese onlookers, the mirror being one of the most sought-after trade goods from Europe in the early contact period. Mirrors of Western manufacture — glass-backed rather than the traditional polished metal mirrors of Japan — were objects of wonder and desire. Kawakami renders this transaction with characteristic warmth: the moment when Japan looked at itself through a foreign technology.