Artworks

Namban screens

Artwork · Anonymous · early 17th century · byōbu · Museum of the Imperial Collections

A pair of namban screens, read against Japanese custom from left to right: a many-masted foreign galleon arrives in a Japanese port, and its captain and crew walk in procession through the streets to the Jesuit church of Kyoto in the upper right. Tall, moustachioed Europeans in pantaloons and flowing capes were an exotic subject until the country was closed in 1641. 1 Mason 2005, pp. 247–249, fig. 282. ↩ Literatur Mason 2005: Penelope E. Mason, History of Japanese Art, 2nd, Pearson Education LTD. 2005.