"View in London," from the series The Prosperity of Countries: London, England

This September 1872 [triptych](/glossary/triptych) of woodblock prints ([nishiki-e](/glossary/nishiki-e)), ink and color on paper, held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (accession number 2007.49.242a-c), is one of Yoshimori's most ambitious Meiji-period compositions. Each of the three sheets measures approximately 36.2 by 23.8 cm, joined to form a panoramic view of London from the series The Prosperity of Countries (Bankoku han'ei zukushi). Following the Meiji Restoration of 1868 and the rapid Westernization that accompanied it, Edo (now Tokyo) publishers turned from the closed-economy ethnographic spectacle of Bakumatsu [Yokohama-e](/glossary/yokohama-e) to a new and more aspirational visual genre that placed the great industrial capitals of the foreign powers — London, Paris, New York, Washington — at the imaginative center of Japanese print publishing. Yoshimori's London, almost certainly derived from imported European printed images that reached Tokyo through the new direct trade, gave Japanese audiences one of the first detailed visual accounts of the city whose industrial and imperial power was the model for the new Meiji state. The composition includes the Thames and its bridges, the dense urban architecture of central London, and the bustling movement of carriages and pedestrians that signified industrial modernity. The print is signed Ippōsai Yoshimori ga and dated to September 1872. It entered the Metropolitan Museum's collection in 2005 through the Bequest of William S. Lieberman.