A Picture of Prosperity: America (Amerika shin no zu)

A Picture of Prosperity: America (Amerika shin no zu) is one of Hiroshige II's most ambitious [Yokohama-e](/glossary/yokohama-e) triptychs, published in 1861 and depicting an imagined view of an American port city seen through the visual conventions of late Edo woodblock printing. The print belongs to the wave of Yokohama-e issued in the years immediately after the 1859 opening of Yokohama: prints depicting the new foreign settlement, its residents, and — as in this sheet — the distant lands from which they had come. Without firsthand access to the United States, Hiroshige II constructed his American city from imported lithographs, foreign newspapers, and the visual reports of Japanese envoys and merchants. The composition arranges Western brick buildings, a steamship and sailing vessel in the harbor, horse-drawn carriages, and Western figures in top hats and crinolines in a single panoramic [triptych](/glossary/triptych), with the title cartouche framing the scene as a portrait of foreign prosperity at the cusp of Japan's own opening. The Art Institute of Chicago impression (1925.3398) was acquired with the Emily Crane Chadbourne gift and is one of the most ambitious treaty-port prints in the collection.