From Kyobashi to Ginza (Kyobashi yori Ginza no zu) | The Sea off Shinagawa (Shinagawa oki)

The location depicted in the lower section of this 1874 print is the very sea from which the Japan's first embassy departed for San Francisco in 1860.

By 1867 regular transpacific service was being conducted between San Francisco and Japan. The 1869 opening of the Suez Canal created a more direct route from Europe to Asia, bringing an ever-greater number of traders and tourists to Japan.

These two scenes—from a series of views of "modern" Tokyo—reveal how much Japan changed by 1874. Only six years earlier, the government center of Edo had been renamed Tokyo, and a government campaign of "civilization and enlightenment" swiftly transformed the heart of the city.

The top scene illustrates several aspects of modernization: a two-story Western-style brick-and-mortar building stands at the far side of Kyobashi (Capital Bridge); a Western-style horse-drawn cart and figures in Western dress cross it; telegraph lines fill the air above.

In the lower scene a paddlewheel steamer makes its way through the waters off Shinagawa (a southern neighborhood of Tokyo), an Italian flag flying from the stern.