Two Kawaraban Pictorial Broadsides Depicting Foreigners, Foreign Objects, and Foreign Coinage

by Japan

$6,500 · Offered by Donald A. Heald Rare Books

Two late Edo Kawaraban broadsides recording foreign people, objects, coinage, dress, and material culture at the moment of Japan's accelerated contact with Europe and America. These two Kawaraban belong to the popular printed culture that developed around Japan's encounter with foreign powers in the 1850s and early 1860s. Produced for circulation beyond official channels, such broadsides translated diplomatic and commercial contact into a form legible to a broad Japanese

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