Thank you for downloading this episode of a history of the world in a hundred objects

from BBC Radio 4. In the early 19th century Japan had been effectively isolated from the world for almost 200 years.

It had quite simply opted out of the community of nations.

Stephen Sondheim's Pacific overtures describes the secluded and calmly self-contained country in 1853,

just before American gunships forced its harbours to open to the world. In the middle of the world we float,

in the middle of the sea,

the reality to remain remote.

In the middle of the sea.

The middle of the sea. The kids are burning somewhere, wheels are turning somewhere,

wheels are turning somewhere,

planes are being done, walls are being one, things are being done

somewhere out there?

Not here.

Here we made screens.

Yes, the invention you to the screens.

It's vintage sondheim caricature, the dreamy and aesthetic Japanese

serenely painting screens, while across the seas the world industrializers and political turmoil rages.

Indeed it's an image the Japanese themselves have sometimes wanted to project and

it's how the most famous of all Japanese images

Hokusai's great wave is sometimes red. This best-selling woodblock print was

made around 1830 by the great artist Hokusai has one of his series of 36

views of Mount Fuji. At first sight it presents a beautiful picture of a deep blue

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