Expéditions

1854 · réf. 191943 — Yokohama: c. 1854. A broadside newsletter kawaraban reporting on the return of the famous castaway Nakahama Manjiro and Perry's second visit to Japan. This example was produced in the year the Japanese isolation policy was ended and talk of foreigners especially Commodore Perry and his "black ships" was rife. Kawaraban were woodblock digests of local news events and scandals cheaply printed and distributed throughout the Edo period. On the left of this example is a short report about Nakahama Manjiro the castaway who lived in America for a decade before returning to Japan in 1851. It is accompanied by an illustration of an American sailor called "Itsuhii" carrying a gun and a compass and a sentence about how he supposedly travelled from Kanagawa to Daisha Gawara before returning to his ship. On the right is an illustration of an item sent floating towards Uraga Bay by Perry's ships with the caption "we do not know what it is". The centre of the page is taken up by an English-Japanese "dictionary" titled Amerika kotoba wakai no utsushi "American Words Translated" which purports to give the translations of common words such as "father" "fish" and "hair". However the translations are not correct: "oranhee" "kyonpo" and "romo" respectively. These words may have been misheard by the author or they may have been a satirical attempt to mock the sound of English. The historian of the English language Sogo Masaaki suggested that perhaps there is some relation to words in Malay. Single sheet 210 x 284 mm woodblock on one side only. Illustrations in text; text in Japanese. Mounted framed with Hawaiian koa wood and glazed 340 x 440 mm. Print bright two small holes on right edge light creasing and dust-soiling; small crack in frame in lower right corner: a very good copy unexamined out of frame. unknown