ABSTRACT
The arrival in Japan of Western pictures provoked considerable comment. The rhetoric surrounding imported images was one of accuracy, closeness, and fidelity to the thing depicted. Ranga was first and foremost a style, and Western pictures were seen to delineate with recognisable differences. Rangaku experts took up the cause of the copperplate etching. In 1783, Kokan became the first person in Japan to resurrect the etching technique, lost after closure of the Jesuit press in the 1610s. Probably the single largest body of Western visual data arriving in Japan was not scientific illustrations but single-sheet printed views, or vedute. The Vereenigde Oost Indische Compannie (VOC) was aware that illustrated compendia could make excellent gifts or bribes to the right recipients, and they came bearing publications that had visual appeal. The VOC register goes on to note that the Japanese referred to the novel box as a gocracqbaco, presumably gokuraku-bako, or “paradise box.”
