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Lot Essay
PUBLISHED
Okamoto Yoshitomo and Takamizawa Tadao, Namban byobu (Tokyo: Kashima Shuppan, 1970), pl. 5.
Kimbell Art Museum: Catalogue of the Collection (Fort Worth: Kimbell Art Foundation, 1972), color pl. p. 279, fig. p. 280.
The Age of Navigation and Japan, 3 (Tokyo: Shogakukan, 1978), pp. 67 and 69 (detail).
Kimbell Art Museum: Handbook of the Collection (Fort Worth: Kimbell Art Foundation, 1981), fig. p. 222.
Journal of the American Medical Association, March 26, 1982 (cover).
Sakamoto Mitsuru, ed., Namban byobu, in Nihon no bijutsu 135 (Tokyo: Shibundo, 1977), figs. 13, 68 (detail), 114 (detail).
The shock of the first encounter of Japan and the West in the sixteenth century is brought to life on these screens. On the left Portuguese traders have landed at Nagasaki and are busy offloading their cargo and on the right the captain-major leads a colorful procession through town to a church where Jesuits and Franciscans are worshipping together. The immense Portuguese ship was a cause of much wonder and excitement at the time of its annual visit. The Portuguese made large profits exchanging Chinese silk for Japanese silver. The carrack set off for Macao and Japan from Goa, the center of the Portuguese empire in Asia, and many of the crew are dark-skinned natives of the Indian subcontinent. Japanese artists catered to a widespread curiosity about the marvelous costumes and strange physiognomy of the "southern barbarians" (so called because they arrived from the south).
Portuguese ships were permitted access to Japan between 1571 and about 1640, when the shogun put into effect a seclusionist policy that closed the country to all outsiders other than Chinese mechants, a handful of Dutch traders, and occasional Korean emissaries. In 1614 an edict was published prohibiting Christianity. The height of the Kimbell screens, about 50cm. shorter than usual, suggests that they were cut down, probably when the retable was effaced, to remove the cross atop the church and avoid any association with Christianity. The screens are most likely the work of an anonymous "town painter" (machi eshi) of the early Edo period and are close in style to a pair in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C. The Japanese scholar Takamizawa Tadao, however, attributed the screens to the hand of Kano Domi, a Christian convert, who is known to have visited Kyushu, and probably Nagasaki, in 1592. He left Japan in 1603 for Manila and was associated with the Franciscan friars.
Okamoto Yoshitomo and Takamizawa Tadao, Namban byobu (Tokyo: Kashima Shuppan, 1970), pl. 5.
Kimbell Art Museum: Catalogue of the Collection (Fort Worth: Kimbell Art Foundation, 1972), color pl. p. 279, fig. p. 280.
The Age of Navigation and Japan, 3 (Tokyo: Shogakukan, 1978), pp. 67 and 69 (detail).
Kimbell Art Museum: Handbook of the Collection (Fort Worth: Kimbell Art Foundation, 1981), fig. p. 222.
Journal of the American Medical Association, March 26, 1982 (cover).
Sakamoto Mitsuru, ed., Namban byobu, in Nihon no bijutsu 135 (Tokyo: Shibundo, 1977), figs. 13, 68 (detail), 114 (detail).
The shock of the first encounter of Japan and the West in the sixteenth century is brought to life on these screens. On the left Portuguese traders have landed at Nagasaki and are busy offloading their cargo and on the right the captain-major leads a colorful procession through town to a church where Jesuits and Franciscans are worshipping together. The immense Portuguese ship was a cause of much wonder and excitement at the time of its annual visit. The Portuguese made large profits exchanging Chinese silk for Japanese silver. The carrack set off for Macao and Japan from Goa, the center of the Portuguese empire in Asia, and many of the crew are dark-skinned natives of the Indian subcontinent. Japanese artists catered to a widespread curiosity about the marvelous costumes and strange physiognomy of the "southern barbarians" (so called because they arrived from the south).
Portuguese ships were permitted access to Japan between 1571 and about 1640, when the shogun put into effect a seclusionist policy that closed the country to all outsiders other than Chinese mechants, a handful of Dutch traders, and occasional Korean emissaries. In 1614 an edict was published prohibiting Christianity. The height of the Kimbell screens, about 50cm. shorter than usual, suggests that they were cut down, probably when the retable was effaced, to remove the cross atop the church and avoid any association with Christianity. The screens are most likely the work of an anonymous "town painter" (machi eshi) of the early Edo period and are close in style to a pair in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C. The Japanese scholar Takamizawa Tadao, however, attributed the screens to the hand of Kano Domi, a Christian convert, who is known to have visited Kyushu, and probably Nagasaki, in 1592. He left Japan in 1603 for Manila and was associated with the Franciscan friars.