Illustration of Foreign Residences and the Catholic Church in Yokohama (Yokohama shōkan tenshudō no zu)

This woodblock print triptych (nishiki-e) by Utagawa Hiroshige III, dated to the tenth month of 1870 and held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (accession number JP3349), is one of his early Yokohama-e and documents the foreign settlement at Yokohama only a year after he formally assumed the Hiroshige III name. The print shows Western merchant houses and the Catholic church (Tenshudō) on the bluff above the harbour, with figures in European dress, jinrikisha, and the distinctive flagged consular buildings of the foreign quarter. The Catholic church depicted is the Yokohama Tenshudō built by French Catholic missionaries in 1862, one of the earliest Christian churches openly constructed in Japan after the Tokugawa-era ban on Christianity was lifted. The print, in standard ōban triptych format at 72.1 by 36.8 cm (vertical), uses the strong aniline reds and purples that characterized Meiji-era nishiki-e, distinguishing them at a glance from the more restrained vegetable-pigment palette of the late Edo period. Yokohama-e prints like this one were sold to a domestic Japanese audience hungry for visual information about the foreigners now living in their own country, and Hiroshige III was one of the most prolific designers of the genre. The print is part of the Metropolitan Museum's collection of Meiji-era Japanese prints.