After more than two centuries of limited contact with westerners via the Dutch trading station of Deshima in Nagasaki Bay, Japanese suddenly faced a new wave of Europeans and Americans on their shores after the opening of new treaty ports in the 1850s. Among these enclaves of foreign settlement was the port of Yokohama, which was opened in July 1859. In a few years this small fishing village was transformed into an international boom town filled with hundreds of Japanese and foreign businesses.

Capitalizing on the exoticism and strangeness of foreigners, artists and publishers in nearby Edo (Tokyo) churned out thousands of prints depicting the clothing, food, customs, and habits of these new "barbarians." So-called "Yokohama prints" joined an artistic tradition of picturing the curiosities of other people beyond Japan. And to most Japanese, western foreigners in particular ranged from enlightening to amusing to bizarre to frightening to downright disgusting.

One well-known Yokohama artist was Hashimoto Sadahide, who had a longstanding interest in foreigners and their practices. He began producing Yokohama prints in 1859, focusing on the goings-on among the foreign businesses. In 1862 he wrote and illustrated a 3-volume best-selling printed book entitled Record of Things Seen and Heard at the Open Port of Yokohama (Yokohama kaikô kembun shi). This Engaging Vision looks at some of this work and asks you to consider its historical value.

Instructions: As you tour the Yokohama foreign settlement as pictured by Hashimoto, note what he chooses to depict and how he depicts it. What seems to catch his interest and why? Consider what these images reveal about their foreign subjects and their Japanese authors. Then email me about 500 well-written words discussing how you might use such images and descriptions as historical documents. What might they tell us (and not tell us) about the place and time?