Women Imitating the Procession of a Korean Embassy

This remarkable print is made up of seven individual sheets, an unusual format that underscores the curious pageant it represents. The Edo period isolation policy (sakoku 鎖国) that closed Japan to trade and travel was not absolute. Exceptions included Chinese and Dutch traders, quarantined on the tiny island of Dejima 出島 in Nagasaki harbor, and embassies from the Ryūkyū Kingdom of the south and the Ainu people of the north. Most impressive by far, however, were the embassies from the Korean court, who made only twelve visits to Japan during the Edo period. They would land in southern Japan and make their way north to Edo in a rare, exotic visual spectacle.

So impressive were these events that many local festivals, including at the Yoshiwara and other Edo districts, began to reenact them. Here, the print designer Utamaro combined his typical subject, Edo beauties in the latest styles, with atypical foreign details: distinctive hats and shawls, banners, trumpets, and for the women on horseback and in the sedan chair, elaborate crowns.