The Rediscovery of Japan: The Critical Reception of Japanese Architecture in Portugal after the Opening of Japan to the West

Abstract

The opening of Japanese ports to the West in 1854 enabled the rediscovery by the rest of the world of Japan as a country, which, until then and throughout the more than two centuries of the Sakoku or closed country period, had maintained an isolationist policy in relation to the outside world. This opening up allowed for contact with Japanese art, including architecture, which was progressively absorbed by Western art, giving rise to Japonisme. Portugal was receptive to Japonisme, even if that receptiveness was motivated more by a taste for the exotic than genuine interest in the values of Japanese art. Even though its influence on Portuguese architecture was practically zero, Japanese architecture was divulged in Portugal. The aim of this paper is to determine an initial understanding of the reception of Japanese architecture in Portuguese books and architecture-related magazines published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The investigation is sustained in interpretative-historical research, and seeks to assess how the contact with Japanese architecture unfolded and also examine the reasons behind its dissemination in Portuguese publications. This assessment is preceded by a contextualisation that sets out to clarify the reception given to Japonisme in the Portuguese art scene.