Peter Irwin Brown was a Dutch artist with a strong desire to see the world. He traveled throughout Europe and Northern African. He was particularly fond of Tunisia, spending several months there, inspiring dozens of paintings of this locale throughout his career. His travels were supported mainly through artistic freelance work. In 1934, Brown visited Japan. He was immediately struck by the beauty and history inherent in the Japanese landscape. He wrote:

In Kyoto, I saw Japanese prints all over the place. My own house late at night against the moon was a print. The temples harmoniously interwoven with the shapely pines were prints. The women in kimono walking along the river under the weeping willows were old prints.

In 1935 Brown made the acquaintance of Watanabe Shozaburo and sold him several drawings and paintings of Japanese subjects which the Shin Hanga publisher used as the basis for woodblock prints.