Circulating art and visual hybridity: cross‐cultural exchanges between Portugal, Japan, and Spain

Abstract

AbstractThis article examines on circulation and visual hybridity in works of art produced in Japan and other major Asian port cities under the control of Portugal and Spain. Cultural influences from the Iberian Peninsula, via traders and missionaries, had a significant impact on artistic production in Japan in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. Many foreign objects brought by the Europeans into Japan exhibit hybrid forms. These hybrid objects played their part in influencing Japanese local production. The impact of Japanese art exported to Europe and colonial Mexico further illustrates the complex circulation of artists and craftsmen, goods and ideas. As artworks travelled in and out of the different artistic production centres in Asia, they both influenced new production and were adapted to local styles and traditions. This article demonstrates that artistic and cultural exchanges are not one‐directional transmission but rather a far more complicated process of hybridization. The article concludes with a call for new art historical approaches for looking at hybrid objects, wherein there is less focus on exactly where and by whom it was made, and more acknowledgement of the shared characteristics and long history of interactions among cultures embodied in the hybridity of objects.