Recently Imported Big Elephant

This [diptych](/glossary/diptych) woodblock print, signed Ichiryūsai Yoshitoyo and dated to the third month of 1863, depicts the celebrated imported Indian elephant that was put on public display at Ryōgoku Hirokōji in Edo in the spring of that year. Held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (accession number JP3305) and printed in ink and color on paper at the standard ōban diptych dimensions of roughly 36.8 by 49.2 cm, the print belongs to the misemono-e (spectacle picture) genre that flourished in the Edo entertainment districts of the late Tokugawa period. Misemono were public attractions, ranging from acrobats and trained-animal acts to freak shows and imported exotica, and they were a staple of the popular print market: a successful misemono in Edo would typically generate a flurry of commemorative prints from rival publishers eager to capture the public excitement. The 1863 elephant was the most celebrated such event of its decade. The animal had been imported from India via Yokohama and was exhibited at the Ryōgoku Hirokōji fairground on the banks of the Sumida River, drawing enormous crowds; Yoshitoyo's diptych shows the elephant in profile across the two sheets with its handlers and a crowd of curious onlookers, the composition emphasising the animal's sheer size and exoticism. The print belongs to a coherent group of Yoshitoyo elephant prints from 1863, all responding to the same event, and it is one of the better-preserved examples in the Metropolitan Museum's collection of late-Edo Yokohama-period prints.