In this scene, Pepe stands on the wooden pier of Yokohama as the steamships pull away from the harbor, their black smoke dissolving into a dusk-colored sky. The soft orange gradient of the sunset, rendered with the delicate tonality of late Meiji nishiki-e, casts a melancholic glow across the water, where ripples shimmer like thin sheets of copper. Pepe’s posture carries the stillness of a traveler suspended between eras: dressed in a sober indigo kimono and holding a small Western-style leather bag, he appears caught in the emotional crosscurrent of a nation transforming faster than anyone can fully comprehend. The cranes overhead, symbols of both longevity and spiritual guidance, arc gracefully toward the horizon as if escorting the departing vessels, floating metaphors for Japan’s rapid outward expansion and its hesitant embrace of Western modernity. Behind him, the brick façades of newly built foreign merchant houses line the waterfront, quiet witnesses to the dizzying cultural exchanges reshaping Meiji society. A single sheet of paper lies abandoned on the pier, curling slightly in the harbor breeze. Its presence suggests a letter never sent, a message lost, or perhaps the last remnant of a past Pepe is trying to leave behind.