Right of Foreigners to Live in the Interior

This painting was originally part of an album titled (Manga Paintings) Illustrations of Sixty Years since the Opening of the Country. The album of paintings by fifty artists depicts people, situations, and events specific to the years from 1868 to 1927. Kawamori’s inscription, Right of Foreigners to Live in the Interior, refers to a policy, implemented in 1899, that allowed foreigners new rights to live, travel, and trade within Japan.

Painted in a loose, comic style, this domestic scene imagines foreign immigrants and native Japanese coexisting peacefully on a summer day. The puffy yellow hair and long noses of the foreign man and woman make them stand out, as does the Western costume worn by the woman (the man seems to be clothed like his Japanese counterpart, in a loose-fitting summer kimono). There is little sense of hierarchy between the races. Instead, it is the genders that are treated differently—the women hard at work while the men take their ease, armed with a pipe and fan.