Arrival and Departure of an American Steamship (Amerikakoku jōkisha ōrai)

This 1861 woodblock print, oban triptych in ink and color on paper, held by the Art Institute of Chicago (accession number 1926.1819), bears the Japanese title Amerikakoku jōkisha ōrai — "Arrival and Departure of an American Steamship." The triptych depicts the comings and goings of an American steam-powered vessel of the kind that, by 1861, had become a regular sight in Yokohama harbor in the wake of the Black Ships of 1853 and the formal opening of the treaty port in 1859. Yoshikazu treats the scene as both technological portrait and panoramic landscape, with the ship rendered in careful mechanical detail at the center of the composition and the harbor, shoreline, and figures of Japanese spectators and foreign residents arranged around it. The print belongs to the dense subgroup of Yoshikazu's Yokohama-e devoted specifically to American steamships — a category of subject matter that directly extended the narrative of Perry's arrival into the visual culture of the early treaty port and that drew on Yoshikazu's evident fascination with the mechanical apparatus of Western maritime power. The print is signed Issen Yoshikazu ga and bears the censor's seal and publisher's marks of 1861. It entered the Art Institute of Chicago's collection through the gift of Emily Crane Chadbourne, whose acquisitions form the core of the museum's outstanding Yoshikazu group.