1863

Russians (Two Russian Men with a Flag)

Utagawa Yoshitora

Japanese, 1836 - 1887

Mistakes often occurred in the rush to produce prints of the newly arrived Westerners. Here, the striped flag shown with the two Russian men is not the Russian flag. It may have been erroneously copied from an illustration of an Italian flag. Since Japanese artists could not read the captions that accompanied Western illustrations, such misunderstandings were common.

The text in the upper background of this print is a Japanese-Dutch vocabulary guide for words dealing with finance and coinage, seemingly unconnected to the figures who are identified as Russian. Dutch, however, was frequently used for translation because the Japanese had a history of engagement with Dutch merchants that spanned nearly three centuries, throughout the era of seclusion.