Edo period

The first Europeans to arrive in Japan did so by accident rather than design. In 1543 a Portuguese ship was blown off course by a typhoon, shipwrecking the sailors on the island of Tanegashima, off the south-west tip of Japan. Eager to trade with Japan, the Portuguese soon established more formal traffic through the port of Nagasaki, and in 1549 the Jesuit priest Francis Xavier (1506 – 52) arrived in the country to found the first Christian mission. For the Japanese, any initial feelings of alarm caused by the appearance of the nanban-jin , or 'southern barbarians', as the Portuguese were called, was soon overshadowed by the exotic appeal of these curious visitors. The fascination aroused by the arrival of Europeans is revealed in many aspects of late 16th- and early 17th-century Japanese visual culture, most dramatically in screens that depict the arrival of a Portuguese vessel into a Japanese port. In an example from our collection, the artist has emphasised the strange physical features and seemingly outlandish dress of the Europeans, who are shown with long noses and balloon-like trousers. Screens such as this were painted, not in Nagasaki, but in Kyoto and as such, they reflected the imagination of the painter rather than a specific reality. The theme of the painting follows traditional Japanese iconography. The Portuguese vessel represents a treasure ship ( takarabune ) bringing wealth and happiness from overseas, while the Europeans themselves were viewed as almost supernatural beings and the bearers of good fortune. Images of nanban-jin occur on objects such as stirrups, mirrors and flasks used by the ruling elite of Japan. A fashion even developed for dressing up in 'southern barbarian' style. The items the Portuguese brought with them had a real impact on Japanese politics and power in the years of the Momoyama (1573 – 1615) and early Edo (1615 – 1868) periods. The Portuguese had arrived in 1543 armed with matchlock guns, which at a time of civil war in Japan, made them particularly welcome. Japan's feuding warlords were quick to recognise the power of this new weapon, and within a decade the guns were being produced in large numbers. Traditional Japanese armour was relatively ineffective against the gun, so heavy western plate-armour was copied and sometimes even adapted by armourers to a more Japanese style. The arrival of Christianity also had a profound effect on Japan. The Catholic mission founded by Xavier was one of the most successful in Asia. By the early 1590s there were an estimated 215,000 Japanese Christians. At that time the Imperial Regent of Japan, Toyotomi Hideoshi (1537 – 98), began to sense that an allegiance to God would threaten his own authority and so issued a decree in 1587 expelling all Christians. This edict was never carried out but persecutions and executions of Christians occurred under the later rule of Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542 – 1616) and his successors. Following a failed Christian uprising in 1637 – 38, all Japanese Christians were forced to renounce their religion or be executed. From 1639, under the sakoku ('closed country') policy all Portuguese were forbidden from entering the country. The Portuguese weren't the only Europeans to establish trade in Japan. The first Dutch ship arrived in 1600, and in 1609 the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, or VOC) established a trading factory in Hirado. Following the expulsion of the Portuguese in 1639, the Dutch became the only Europeans allowed to remain in Japan. They were forced to move to Dejima, a tiny artificial island in Nagasaki Bay, where they were kept under close scrutiny. The principal purpose of trade with Japan was to obtain gold, silver and copper, of which the country had valuable deposits. However, the luxury goods produced by Japan's craftsmen also had immediate appeal and soon became a significant part of the goods that were transported back to Europe. Lacquer was virtually unknown in the West