August 30, 1900 · Toyo Kisen Kaisha · Tiffin (a mid-day meal in the Anglo-Indian and East Asian sea tradition)
The route advertised on this menu — “America, Hawaiian Islands, Japan, China, Philippines, India” — captures the full trans-Pacific and South Asian extension that Toyo Kisen reached by 1900. “Tiffin” was the standard term for a light midday meal aboard ships running East Asian routes, borrowed from Anglo-Indian English.
The cover is a remarkable Art Nouveau photomontage: Mount Fuji and a Chinese multi-tiered pagoda are shown as separate vignettes within an Art Nouveau frame, alongside a small steamship and the Japanese flag. The composition functions as a visual route map — each image representing one of the ports of call. This style of pictorial route advertising would later become standard on travel posters.
Toyo Kisen Kaisha — “Oriental Steamship Company” — was founded in 1896 by Asano Sōichirō to compete with NYK on the trans-Pacific route. Toyo Kisen focused specifically on Yokohama–Hong Kong–San Francisco service and later extended to Hawaii. The company merged with NYK in 1926.
Visual style: Black-and-white photomontage cover featuring Mount Fuji, a Chinese pagoda, the Japanese flag, and a steamship.
What you receive
- Three print sizes: 8×10, 11×14, 16×20 inches (300 DPI, ready for any home printer or framing shop).
- Two versions of each size: a pure print (no added text) and a museum print (with a small caption: restaurant or ship, year, and source).
- A 1–2 page PDF with the menu’s historical context.
- One ZIP file, instantly downloadable after checkout.
About the source
This menu is preserved in the Buttolph Collection of Menus at The New York Public Library and is in the public domain in the United States. The Menu Press has curated, digitally restored, and reformatted the work for modern printing.
