Yokohama Trade: Picture of Westerners Shipping Cargo

This ōban pentaptych of woodblock prints by Utagawa Sadahide, dated April 1861 and held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (accession number JP3389a-e), is one of the most ambitious and panoramic Yokohama-e compositions of the early treaty-port years. The full title, 'Yokohama Trade: Picture of Westerners Shipping Cargo,' announces its subject: the loading and unloading of merchandise at the Yokohama waterfront by Western merchants, sailors, and stevedores, surrounded by the bustle of the international port. The five sheets, joined to form a single image roughly 35.9 by 126.5 cm, demonstrate the spectacular horizontal compositions Sadahide could achieve when freed from the standard triptych format. Pentaptychs and longer compositions had a deep ancestry in earlier ukiyo-e — kabuki theatre interiors, pleasure-quarter parades, and battle scenes had long been depicted across four, five, or more sheets — but Sadahide adapted the convention to the documentary purposes of Yokohama-e, depicting Westerners of multiple nationalities and the diverse cargoes (textiles, barrels, crates) of nineteenth-century international trade. The print is dated April 1861, less than two years after Yokohama's opening, and reflects the immediacy with which Edo print designers responded to the new port. It is among the most important Sadahide compositions in any collection and a centerpiece of the Metropolitan Museum's holdings of Yokohama-e.