Picture of Steam Locomotives Traveling (Jokisha rikudo tsuko no zu)

This 1870 color woodblock print ([nishiki-e](/glossary/nishiki-e)) [triptych](/glossary/triptych) in the standard ōban format, held by the Art Institute of Chicago (accession number 1926.1757), is a defining document of early Meiji technological enthusiasm. Titled "Picture of Steam Locomotives Traveling" (Jōkisha rikudō tsūkō no zu), the triptych depicts steam locomotives speeding across an imagined landscape several years before Japan's first railway — the Shinbashi-Yokohama line that opened in 1872 — was actually built. Yoshitora produced this print and related depictions of steam technology from European visual sources and from drawings of the railways being constructed in Japan; the imagery is more imaginative than documentary, reflecting the popular fascination with steam power as a symbol of the new Meiji modernity. Such modernization prints had become a substantial market by 1870 for Tokyo publishers eager to satisfy public curiosity about Western technology, and Yoshitora was one of their principal designers. The print is part of the Art Institute of Chicago's holdings of Yoshitora's [Yokohama-e](/glossary/yokohama-e) and Meiji prints, assembled through the gift of Emily Crane Chadbourne in 1926.