An English Woman with a Chinese Servant in the Foreign District, from the series Famous Places in Yokohama

This woodblock print ([nishiki-e](/glossary/nishiki-e)), ink and color on paper, dated 1861 and held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (accession number 2007.49.172), is a single ōban sheet from the series Yokohama meisho (Famous Places in Yokohama). The image measures 36.5 by 24.8 cm and depicts an English woman in Western dress accompanied by a Chinese male servant within the foreign settlement at Yokohama. The presence of Chinese servants and compradores in the foreign quarter — typically recruited from the Anglo-Chinese trade networks of Shanghai and Hong Kong by British and American merchants who had established themselves in Yokohama after 1859 — was one of the visual novelties that Yoshikazu's prints carefully documented. The series Famous Places in Yokohama was one of Yoshikazu's most extensive [Yokohama-e](/glossary/yokohama-e) projects and set foreign figures against the topography of specific named locations within the foreign settlement. The print is signed Issen Yoshikazu ga and bears the publisher's marks and censor's seal of 1861, placing it within the explosive Yokohama-e season of that year, when Yoshikazu was producing new designs on an almost monthly basis. The bright palette, careful attention to the woman's foreign dress and the servant's queue and tunic, and the use of the ōban single-sheet format are characteristic of the series as a whole. The print entered the Metropolitan Museum's collection in 2005 through the Bequest of William S. Lieberman.