A city with western-style buildings (in Japan?), in which a western couple are observed by Japanese. Woodcut after Kyōsai (Gyōsai), 1874.

[Tokyo], [1874]

2 prints: woodcut, printed in colours ; image and border 17.2 x 11.4 cm and 17.2 x 11.4 cm

Seisei Kyōsai-ga

The city in the background may have been copied from an unidentified western print, e.g. of Paris or London. Possibly a projection to a time when Japanese cities would look like western ones and be visited by admiring westerners? Similar subjects were designed by Kyōsai to illustrate humorous accounts of Japanese visitors to Paris and London: see Smith, loc. cit., no. 79 (Japanese people visiting the British Museum, 1870-1876) and no. 86 (the Palais Garnier or Opéra de Paris). The arcade on the left might be meant to be the arcade of the Rue de Rivoli in Paris: it is not accurate, but nor is his rendering of the Palais Garnier (he gives it a pediment)

Timothy Clark, Demon of painting: the art of Kawanabe Kyōsai, London 1993

Wellcome Collection 729047i