That's a good question, and I don't know the answer--though wakanomori might. Certainly **some** things were already coming West from Japan, but in the 1840s Japan was still officially a closed country--of Europeans, only the Dutch were trading there.

More likely, and implicit in what you said, Russell and Purrington simply didn't have a notion of a correct way to "read" a picture--and there's a 50-50 chance of going from right to left instead of left to right.