Celebrating Trade Between Japan and America - 1Earth Antiques and Appraisals Magazine

Sailing ships opened the way for an exchange of art and ideas

Worlds Revealed: The Dawn of Japanese and American Exchange
Peabody Essex Museum
Salem, MA
November 8 through Spring 2001

Model of a Japanese Samurai, early Meiji period

Model of a Japanese Samurai,
lacquer, metal, wood, textiles,
early Meiji period

Worlds Revealed: The Dawn of Japanese and American Exchange honors the bicentennial of America's cultural and commercial ties with Japan.

The exhibition was organized by the Peabody Essex Museum in conjunction with the Edo-Tokyo Museum in Japan. It features more than 200 artworks, cultural objects, and documents representing the early years of Japanese-American exchange.

The Peabody Essex is a fitting home for this monumental exhibition: In 1799 the first American ships sailed from Salem to the Far East in search of new trading posts.

America's introduction to Japanese art and culture is represented in an array of woodblock prints, ceramic pieces, and richly decorated scrolls that were brought here by the first ships from Nagasaki.

Another display highlights how the whaling industry bonded the two nations at sea. It features a fascinating selection of scrimshawed whale teeth and a mid-19th century handscroll depicting an American whaler's rescue of a Japanese ship in distress.

Worlds Revealed culminates with works relating to the Treaty of Kanagawa, which established permanent trade between the United States and Japan in 1854. Ishibashi Rochi's "The Black Ships" offers a foreboding view of Japan's relations with the United States. It provides the perfect endnote for a commemoration of the early days of the Japanese and American exchange.

For more information call 978-745-9500 or visit http://www.pem.org/