Toshi Shimizu came to the U.S. to become a painter and studied at Fokko Tadama’s painting school in Seattle, Washington, and then under John Sloan at the Art Students League in New York City. The subject of this painting is Yokohama, Japan, a town where Toshi Shimizu stopped when he temporarily returned to Japan in 1920 for his wedding. In this painting, against the background of a port town crowded with people heading abroad by ship, people are having a banquet in the upstairs tatami room of an inn. The work shows Japanese in kimonos and rickshaw drivers on the street, and Westerners in Western clothes who stopped by the port on a ship.

“Yokohama Night” was exhibited at the annual exhibition of the Chicago Art Institute in 1921, where it was selected for the Augustus Award, but the award was withdrawn because the artist was not American. This event raised Shimizu’s profile, and in 1923, he had a solo exhibition at the Blumer Gallery, and he continued to exhibit at the Society of Independent Artists and the Salons of America every year until 1924 when he moved to France.