Franciscan Church in Holland

Even after the closing of Japan in 1639—after which no Westerners were permitted in except a few Dutch traders restricted to one town—the Japanese continued to be interested in European products such as telescopes and clocks. In the eighteenth century, restrictions on the import of European books were eased, and eventually European printed illustrations circulated fairly widely. Japanese artists found a local market for woodblock-printed copies of some of these illustrations, for example those showing the sights of the great cities of the West. This Japanese print shows the Forum, Column of Trajan, and Colosseum in Rome, but labels the view "Church in Holland," adding Japanese characters that may stand for "Franciscan." How the labeling went so badly wrong is not known, but few Japanese viewers of the time would have recognized the mistake, any more than European viewers would necessarily have noticed that an illustration of Kyoto was mislabeled "Shanghai."