University of Alberta Museums Search

Utagawa Yoshikazu was a pupil of Utagawa Kuniyoshi and made his name in the late ukiyo-e sub-style of yokohama-e. Yokohama-e prints documented the lives of foreigners and provide interesting insight into how Westerners were viewed in Japanese culture. Until the mid-nineteenth century, trade and access was limited to Dutch traders who were restricted to a tiny island off Nagasaki. The Dutch traders were officially the only ones allowed to maintain all Japanese import and export trades with the outside world. With the opening of Japan to all foreign countries and influence in the mid 1800s, the wider Japanese population used yokohama-e prints to satisfy the curiosity towards the strange-looking newcomers, their different way of life and their technological achievements, such as iron black ships, horse-drawn carriages and locomotives. Yoshikazu flourished during the 1850-60 period in Edo; this print is an excellent example of his later "decadent" ukiyo-e prints.