Japan had trade relations with many other regions including England, France and America. The painting shown here is decidedly Japanese with the thickly colored roofs and dark outlining. The coloring of both the sky and the water are also reminiscent of Japanese art style. From the information gathered from this image, one can assume that relations were going well. The bays are bustling trade ports overseen by multicultural management. However, the scene still has tones of segregation. The different flags are arranged in a unified fashion, but the people are still displayed as a "type." The british are colored red, American's black and the Japanese are wearing traditional attire, sometimes harvesting boots and sun hats. This choice was probably not malicious, but used only to signify the new people's presence and intermingling with the natives. Pretty interesting picture, if you ask me.
This picture seems interesting to me also. I like how the different buildings have flags of the different nationalities.
ReplyDeleteI like your opinion that the people are displayed by colors.
ReplyDeleteAt the same time, I wonder why the painter chose the colors for each country.
I also found the coloring of each country really interesting. It might be cool to look into what each color meant to a Japanese native at the time. It might shed some light on the artist's view of the British and the Americans.
ReplyDelete@Briana
ReplyDeleteI agree! The image of the flags against the cleanly colored sky is what drew me to the piece originally.
@Chihiro
My guess is that the intermingling of the different cultures was striking to everyone living at that time. It seems to only make sense that an artist would show this distinction through color - seems awfully judgmental, though!
@Chsmith
Absolutely. It's difficult, though. See, the British are red, but that makes sense considering that their uniforms were likely colored red. Odd, then, that the American's are colored black. Perhaps there is a mix of factuality and artistic bias?