WEBThese large, painted folding screens depicted the earliest Europeans (the “barbarians”) to come to Japan—the Catholic missionaries and merchants of Portugal and Spain. Their ships reached the Southern tip of the …

WEBNamban folding screens depicting exchanges with the Southern Barbarians (Nambanjin) from Portugal and Spain were produced in great numbers, primarily in the early 17th century.

WEBIn 1543, a storm blew a Portuguese ship onto the tiny Japanese island of Tanegashima, and within a year, Portuguese ships began making regular visits to ports in Kyūshū. The Japanese called them Nanban, “Southern …

WEBNamban or Nanban is a Sino-Japanese word that translates into “southern barbarians”. This rather harsh term was used to refer to the merchants and travelers who docked on Chinese ports from the South, particularly …

WEBThis coffer belongs to a category of Japanese goods known as namban (literally, southern barbarians) that were produced in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century for trade with Portugal and other European …