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Black Ships & Samurai
Commodore Perry and the
Opening of Japan (1853–1854)

On July 8, 1853, residents of feudal Japan beheld an astonishing sight; foreign warships entering their harbor under a cloud of black smoke. Commodore Matthew Perry had arrived to force the long-secluded country to open its doors. Essay by John W. Dower

Yokohama Boomtown
Foreigners in Treaty-Port
Japan (1859–1872)

This window on the imagined life of foreigners in Japan at the dawn of the modern era is based on the catalogue of the 1990 exhibition at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Yokohama: Prints from Nineteenth-Century Japan, by Ann Yonemura. Essay by John W. Dower.

Throwing Off Asia
Woodblock Prints of Meiji Japan (1868–1912)

A three-part series based on the Jean S. and Frederic A. Sharf Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Throwing Off Asia l
Woodblock Prints of
Domestic “Westernization” (1868–1912)

The remarkably swift "Westernization" of Japan in the late-19th and early-20th century was most vividly captured in popular woodblock prints. The images in this unit illustrate the great political, social, cultural, and industrial transformations that took place. Essay by John W. Dower.

Throwing Off Asia ll
Woodblock Prints of the Sino-Japanese War
(1894–95)

The "Westernization" of Japan included strengthening the military and engaging in major wars against both China and Tsarist Russia. These remarkable propaganda prints illustrate Japan's startling victory in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894 to 1895. Essay by John W. Dower.

Throwing Off Asia lll
Woodblock Prints of the Russo-Japanese
War (1904–05)

Meiji Japan’s “Westernization” culminated in a titanic war against Tsarist Russia that stunned the world and established Japan as a major imperialist power, with a firm foothold on the Asian mainland. This unit draws on photographs and rare war prints. Essay by John W. Dower.

Asia Rising
Japanese Postcards of the
Russo-Japanese War (1904–05)

Imperial Japan’s 1904 to 1905 war against Tsarist Russia changed the global balance of power. The first war to be widely illustrated in postcards, the Japanese view of the conflict is presented here. Produced in association with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Essay by John W. Dower.

Yellow Promise/Yellow Peril
Foreign Postcards of the
Russo-Japanese War (1904–05)

The first war to be depicted internationally in postcards is captured here in these dramatic images. Produced in association with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Essay by John W. Dower.

Ground Zero 1945
Pictures by Atomic Bomb Survivors

These drawings and paintings by Japanese survivors of the atomic bomb were created more than a quarter century after the bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. They are provided by the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. Essay by John W. Dower.

Felice Beato's Japan: People
An Album by the Pioneer Foreign
Photographer in Yokohama

These photos of men and women from different walks of life catered to foreign curiosity about the "exotic" Japanese. Most were taken in Beato's studio in Yokohama. Album courtesy of the Smith College Museum of Art. Essay by Alona C. Wilson.

Felice Beato's Japan: Places
An Album by the Pioneer Foreign
Photographer in Yokohama

This 50-image album features scenes along the routes that foreign sightseers travelled in the opening years of the Meiji period. Album courtesy of the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College. Essay by Allen Hockley

MIT Visualizing Cultures Image Database

Search the Visualizing Cultures units for images from the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.

Globetrotter’s Japan: Places
Foreigners on the Tourist Circuit in Meiji Japan

View hand-colored photographs of the sights on a typical tour of late-19th-century Japan, reproduced here from a lush 10-volume set by Captain Frank Brinkley. Comments appear from travel books by “globetrotter” tourists of the time. Essay by Allen Hockley. Brinkley’s Japan courtesy Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College.

Ground Zero 1945
A Schoolboy’s Story

This unit presents the illustrated testimony of Akihiro Takahashi, who survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Illustrations by Goro Shikoku, with English translation by Yuki Tanaka.
Courtesy of Hiroshima Peace Institute.