A RARE SIX-PANEL BYOBU ‘NANBAN’ SCREEN DEPICTING THE ARRIVAL OF A PORTUGUESE SHIP FOR TRADE

Japan, late Edo period (1615-1868)

Ink, watercolors, gold paint, and gold leaf on paper. Mounted on six roiro lacquered wood panels with gilt-metal fittings. Finely painted with a four-masted ship approaching the Nagasaki port, on the west coast of Kyushu, the southernmost of the four main islands of Japan. Crew members, including natives from the Indian subcontinent, are seen furling its sails. The crew is shown performing alarming acrobatic feats in the rigging. The flags of Jesuit missionaries with Christian emblems flutter in the breeze. Cargo and passengers are offloaded into small boats that pull alongside the ship, a diagram of a map enclosed with a 12-wind compass rose to the top-right corner, all partially shrouded by gold clouds.

The artist emphasizes the balloon-like bagginess of their bombacha pantaloons, but focuses also on distinctive details such as heavy gold necklaces, facial hair, hats, capes, frilly white handkerchiefs and ruffled collars. The foreigners are exotic but not forbidding; they are humanized with a wealth of charming anecdotal detail and good humor.

SIZE 272 x 104 cm

Condition: Excellent condition with minor wear and well preserved, vibrant colors. Minuscule soiling and minor flaking to pigment. The back with traces of wear and use.

The scene presents a narrative of the dynamic conflation of East and West around 1600. Portuguese traders reached Japan in 1543, and by 1570 they had selected the Bay of Nagasaki as the ideal natural harbor for the center of their commerce, which was conducted with little or no restriction. The Portuguese made large profits selling Chinese silk to the Japanese in exchange for silver; some European goods were also traded. The great ship was a three-deck carrack of up to 1,600 tons, and its enormous size and exotic crew and cargo were the cause of much wonder and excitement.

Jesuit missionaries accompanied the Portuguese traders and spread Christianity in Japan, especially in Kyushu, where there were many converts among the local daimyo. In 1638, an uprising by Christian converts convinced the Tokugawa government of the dreaded possibility of intervention by European colonial powers. In 1639, the Portuguese were expelled. All sixty members of the Portuguese delegation that arrived the following year to plead for resumption of trade were beheaded. In 1640, the shogun put into effect a seclusionist policy that closed the country to all outsiders other than Chinese merchants, a handful of Dutch traders, and occasional Korean emissaries. By 1650, Christian imagery was banned and missionary activity a capital offense.

The earliest screen of this type is thought to date from the 1590s and is attributed to Kano Mitsunobu (1561/5–1608), who was called from Kyoto to decorate Hideyoshi’s Nagoya Castle in northern Kyushu. The fad for Nanban screens continued into the second quarter of the seventeenth century. Around ninety Nanban screens are now recorded and Japanese scholars have determined that the subject ranked second in popularity only to screens depicting scenes in and around the Capital (Rakuchu rakugai zu). Thematically, the painting here continues a tradition of now-lost screens of Chinese trade ships that were in vogue during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries at the peak of the Sino-Japanese tribute missions that brought entourages numbering in the thousands from the Ming court.

Museum comparison:
For a nanban screen showing similar map diagrams as on the present screen, one of a pair of six-fold screens, dated 1640, see Berkeley, University of California, East Asian Library, call number Byobu 1 SPEC–Map.

Auction comparison:
Compare a closely related, yet later, six-panel byobu screen depicting the arrival of a Portuguese ship, Meiji period, at Zacke, Asian Art Discoveries, 20 January 2023, Vienna, lot 1248 (sold for EUR 33,800). Compare a related nanban six-fold screen depicting the arrival of a Portuguese ship for trade, 17^th century, at Christie’s, European Courts Encounter Japan, 11 May 2015, London, lot 8 (sold for GBP 818,500).