Japan's encounter with Europe, 1573 – 1853
Japan's encounter with Europe, 1573 – 1853
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.
\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
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