I really like this portrait of Katsu Kaishu. The artist was Edward M. Kern, one of the US Navy sailors under Lieutenant John M. Brooke who joined Capt. Kaishu and company on their historical journey aboard the warship Kanrin Maru, the first Japanese ship to reach North America upon landing at San Francisco on March 17 (St. Patrick’s Day), 1860. Based on the inscription on the backside of the painting, Kaishu was apparently known to the Americans as “Capt. Katzlintaro” (and at least one SF newspaper referred to him as Capt. Katsintarroh), Rintaro being his given name. Kern was a draftsman who had served in John Charles Fremont’s third expedition to the American West. Fremont named the Kern River in California after him. As I wrote in Samurai Revolution, the only full-length biography of Katsu Kaishu in English, the local San Francisco newspaper Daily Evening Bulletin described Katsu Kaishu as “a fine looking man, marvelously resembling in stature, form and features Colonel [John Charles] Fremont, only that his eye is darker, and his mouth less distinctly shows the pluck of its owner.”
Samurai Revolution is the only full-length biography of Katsu Kaishū in English.
