16.  Momoyama Castles, Christianity, and Commerce

Momoyama 桃山時代　 1573-1615

How to decorate a castle?

White Heron Castle (Himeiji Castle 姫路城 ) near Osaka.   1601-09.   [Mason, fig. 273-74]

Sôtatsu 宗達   God of Thunder and God of Wind , a pair of 2-panel folding screens (byôbu). After 1621.   Color and gold and silver paint on paper; each screen 59 x 70 in.   [Mason, fig. 312]

Scenes in and around Kyoto (Rakuchû-rakugaizu 洛中洛外図屏風), 1520s, 6-fold screen, color and gold leaf on paper; each screen 61 x 132 inches (in class see detail of genre scene of Gion festival 祇園祭礼 procession on Teramachidori 寺町通 in Kyoto) [Mason, fig. 203a, 203b]

Nagasaki 長崎 port city at the southern tip of the Japanese island Kyushu in the south; Portugese ships were permitted access from 1571 until 1639, when the Japanese Shogun put into effect an isolationist policy that closed the country to most outsiders.

nanban 南蛮 (sometimes spelled namban):   “southern barbarian,” refers to paintings which take the Portugese and Spanish missionaries and Dutch merchants as subject matter and also to a particular style of art that blends Japanese and European (Italian and Portugese) techniques.   The fad for nanban art was at its peak from about 1590 to 1614.

Nanban subjects:

•  foreigners and their bizarre customs (fig. 282)

•  religious subjects                            

What effect did nanban have on Japanese culture?

Portrait of Hasekura Tsunenaga, oil painting

            Compare with:   Champagne's Cardinal Richelieu, 17th century

                                    Portrait of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, 17th century

Religious conversions of Japanese to Christianity

What happened to put an end to nanban culture?

1605:   year that the Shogunate began to persecute Christians outside of Nagasaki; Christian iconography goes underground, and in 1638 Shogun issues interdiction on Christianity that forces all converts to hide any traces of their Christian belief and practice

Martyrdom at Nagasaki, 1622 & 1640

The fad for foreign maps, for example, ended in the mid-17th century, but traces of European painting styles lingered in Japanese art