Fan (Uchiwa; Dansen)

From card: "from the handle a split bamboo frame, with paper glued on, and painted; front: 3 women by a table overlooking a shore-blues and blacks, back: 6 boats in the water, plus inscriptions."

The woodcut artist of the print on the obverse of the fan is the great ukiyo-e master, Utagawa Hiroshige I. The reverse print artist is by the artist, Yanagawa Shigenobu I.

This fan was collected by Commodore Mathew Perry during his Japan Expedition (1853-1854) that brought an end to Japan's two centuries of self-imposed isolation from the western world, beginning a lasting diplomatic, economic and cultural relationship between two Pacific Rim nations. The objects collected from that expedition became the founding items of the Smithsonian Institution's anthropology collections.See Chang-Su Houchins. 1995. Artifacts of Diplomacy: Smithsonian Collections from Commodore Matthew Perry's Japan Expedition (1853-1854). Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology, Number 37. P 74 and 75