An Aesthetic Gateway to Japan: Mount Fuji and the Steamship Arrival in British Travel Writing, 1880–1900

Laurence Williams’s essay examines one of the key visual “gateways” through which Westerners encountered Japan: Mount Fuji, seen from the deck of steamships arriving in Japan from North America. Fuji rises to the status of global symbol during the late Meiji period, through the influence of Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock art, most notably the images of Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849). Williams explores the development, in travel narratives, of a “verbal japonism”, modelled on the stylistic traits of Japanese art. Through its prominence in the steamship arrival set piece in travel accounts, the “first sighting” of Fuji becomes a key gateway to Japan in travel accounts by travellers including Isabella Bird and Lafcadio Hearn. Williams explores a recurrent symbolism in these texts, in which Fuji, as symbol of the Japanese nation, is placed in dialogue with the Pacific Ocean, symbolising the encroaching force of European and American infrastructural and trade networks.