Articles
Visual Bilingualism and Mission Art: A Reconsideration of "Early Western-Style Painting" in Japan
Abstract
This paper addresses the topics of artistic hybridity and visual bilingualism,
through a critical analysis of Japanese "early Western-style painting," a disputed genre
of hybrid paintings from Azuchi Momoyama and early Edo that combine Asian and European
traditions. The paper examines one such example of early Western-style paintings, a pair
of Japanese folding screens that represents figures of European aristocrats in a European
pastoral landscape. The paper shows that this pair of folding screens is a result of cross
cultural collaboration between Japanese painters and European missionaries, and analyzes
the screens in view of Christian and Buddhist iconographies. The paper aims to
demonstrate the way in which the anonymous painter successfully combined Japanese and
European tradition to make the artwork "bilingual" aesthetically as well as religiously.
This paper addresses the topics of artistic hybridity and visual bilingualism,
through a critical analysis of Japanese "early Western-style painting," a disputed genre
of hybrid paintings from Azuchi Momoyama and early Edo that combine Asian and European
traditions. The paper examines one such example of early Western-style paintings, a pair
of Japanese folding screens that represents figures of European aristocrats in a European
pastoral landscape. The paper shows that this pair of folding screens is a result of cross
cultural collaboration between Japanese painters and European missionaries, and analyzes
the screens in view of Christian and Buddhist iconographies. The paper aims to
demonstrate the way in which the anonymous painter successfully combined Japanese and
European tradition to make the artwork "bilingual" aesthetically as well as religiously.