Portuguese ambitions vs Japanese tradition

Abstract

The article aims at exploring the particularly enchanting – in terms of scientific research – historic area of the Nanban art period in Japan during which a new type of Japanese art emerged reflecting the scopes and intentions of the first European traders / Christian missioners who arrived in the southern part of the country in the mid sixteenth century. More precisely, it focuses on some of the most characteristic artifacts of the Portuguese daily way of life or religion which played a particularly important role in the imagination, ideology, consciousness and creativity of the locals who seemed to assimilate this new type of practical, aesthetic and religious information by transforming it to a new type of art and craft. But under which conditions were all these happened and what did these new objects mean? Were these objects used by the local communities or were they exported to Europe? What were the social and political, conditions in traditional Japan during this ‘cultural upheaval’ caused by the Portuguese traders and Jesuits? The article aims also at exemplifying questions of this type as the moving and transforming of objects in history is always associated with changes in the cultural physiognomy of societies.