Picture of an Elephant Born in Maruka in Central India

This single-sheet woodblock print, signed Ichiryūsai Yoshitoyo and dated to the second month of 1863, depicts the famous Indian elephant that was put on public display at Ryōgoku Hirokōji in Edo in the spring of 1863. Held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art under accession number 2007.49.250, the print is in ink and color on paper at ōban dimensions of roughly 35.9 by 24.1 cm. The title cartouche identifies the elephant as having been born at "Maruka in Central India," a fanciful or imperfectly transcribed geographical attribution typical of Edo period prints documenting exotic imports; the public appetite was for spectacle and novelty rather than scrupulous ethnography. The animal had arrived through the treaty port of Yokohama and was exhibited as a paid misemono attraction, drawing very large crowds; Edo publishers responded with a flurry of commemorative prints and Yoshitoyo was the most active designer of the season's elephant prints, producing several closely related compositions including a vertical-diptych version (Met 2007.49.249a, b) and a horizontal diptych version (Met JP3305). The present print is the single-sheet treatment of the same event and is a particularly clear example of the misemono-e genre, in which an Edo printmaker turned a paid public attraction into a take-home illustrated record for the visitor. It is preserved in the Metropolitan Museum's collection of late-Edo prints.