Namban byobu prints from the late Momoyma and early Edo periods clearly demonstrate the Japanese interest in the West. Yoshitomo Okamoto defines the prints as, “works of art produced as a result of intercourse between the Japanese and southern Europeans – mainly Portuguese and Spaniards – who arrived in Japan in the sixteenth century” (9). Namban is not a particular style, but rather, “a convenient general term for works in two heterogeneous styles of completely different origin – a Japanese style and a Western style” (Okamoto 9). By 1600, conditions in Japan had improved so much that free-flowing trade opened throughout the country and merchants in port cities became wealthy as a result of the national and international trade. As lifestyles moved upward, more and more Japanese could afford some of the finer things in life, including what was then “contemporary” art – namban byobu. The wealthy, and even the average Japanese person, were not only drawn to the depictions of foreigners for aesthetic reasons, but also for an increasing desire for knowledge of the outside world.

Featured in most namban byobu are Western dress, religion, and exotic customs. Visitors from the West typically came to Japan through the port city of Nagasaki. The galleon (or nao in Portuguese) in the harbor in these screens usually consumes much of the space, and therefore shows the Momoyama-Edo period fascination with these huge ships and the products they contained. Prior to the appearance of nao, Japanese ports had only seen the small Chinese junks. And so at first sight, the nao were both impressive and intimidating. In most byobu, the ships are in the harbor in the left side of the screen and the ascension of the captain-major with his retinue is placed in the right half. The procession of the foreigners through the town was fascinating to most Japanese viewers. “These occasions played very important roles both for Japanese high officials and common peoples. Officials learned the arts of cultural and political exchange with their counterparts. Townspeople saw live representatives of foreigners and came to acknowledge the reality of global diversity” (Gonnami). The Kano school was one of the Japanese art circles famous for capturing these particular foreign sights.

The Kano school managed to highlight specific aspects of the foreign visits. “The artists did not attempt to reproduce the scene in vigorous detail either as regards the place or event. They tended to concentrate on the decorative value of the screens and emphasized the elements that would have been unfamiliar to most Japanese; thus the exaggerated height of the foreigners and the bagginess of their bombacha pantaloons are regular features of these works. Care was taken to include all the foreign items that would most interest the Japanese” (Cooper 176). Balancing the two aspects – Japanese and Western – was a task that the school worked hard to achieve so that the screens would best appeal to the Japanese viewer.

However, “although Western influence can be discerned in these pictures, the materials employed and the pictoral technique were entirely traditional” (Cooper 175). The distinct method of the Kano school can be seen clearly in namban byobu. An obvious mark of the Kano school is the heavy use of gold clouds that appear throughout the historical narrative painting. No influence of Western painting or chiaroscuro can be observed. Rather, the style is very much in the tradition of yamato-e, which emphasized detailed representations of people, buildings, and utensils over the broad area of the screen. Even though the Kano style was completely Japanese in its aesthetic, it managed to appeal to both native and foreign viewers due to its apt portrayal of the meeting of the two cultures.

Because there are still so many extant namban byobu that have all been painted in a certain way, with certain elements, leads one to believe that there were probably many more works produced during this brief time period. Okamoto remarks that this phenomena “proves a process of copying in pursuit of a fad, and there must have been a social background that would permit this kind of faddish imitation” (91). Unlike most fads that eventually fade, however, the namban byobu continued to be popular even during the years of persecution of Christians and Japan’s isolation. Japan was closed by 1639 by the Tokugawa Shogunate (bakufu) due to the perceived threatening spread of Christianity by the Spanish and Portuguese. Until 1868 only Chinese and Dutch traders could access Japan through the port of Nagasaki. Most scholars believe that the namban byobu were an effective tool that cleverly mixed both traditional Japanese aspects and Western portrayals that eventually helped to open Japan up to the West and Western ideas.

Works Cited:

Cooper, Michael. The Southern Barbarians. Tokyo: Kodansha, 1971.

Gonnami, Tsuneharu. “Images of Foreigners in Edo period Maps and Prints.” http://patriot.lib.byu.edu/EastAsianLibraries/image/6713152132003_1266224.PDF.

Okamoto, Yoshitomo. The Namban Art of Japan. New York: Weatherhill, 1972.

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