Abstract
Akita Ranga, the first Western-influenced school of painting in Japan, is still today often seen as no more than a local cultural phenomenon, one providing at best anecdotal evidence of the way in which East met West. This school, however, should more properly be considered a sophisticated by-product of the Western learning brought to Japan in the eighteenth century through trading with the Dutch VOC. Iconographical investigation of its artworks through the perspective of global history reveals that Akita Ranga was connected with the contemporary diffusion of natural science and its travelling images.
