Page 194 - JAPAN THE SHAPING OFDAIMYO CULTURE 1185-1868

route was used by Hideyoshi's army before figures, twenty-eight cities are depicted, 112 Four equestrians in combat
and during his Korean expedition of 1592. from top to bottom, right to left: Goa, four-fold screen; color and gold leaf on
This date, too, is problematic. The shapes Paris, Prague, Calcutta, Mexico City, paper
of the islands, as conceptual as the land Aden, Frankfurt, Sofala, Venice, Amster- 166.0 x 338.0 (653/8 x 133)
masses of Europe, are also based on a Eu- dam, Cologne, Cuzco, Rome, Ormuz, Momoyama period, early i7th century
ropean model, possibly the Dutch cartog- Bantam, Mozambique, Istanbul, London,
rapher William Blaeu's map of Asia of Genoa, Hamburg, Seville, Antwerp, Stock- Kobe City Museum of Nanban Art,
1635. The strangely shortened Honshu is- holm, Moscow, Lisbon, Dantzig, Bergen, Hyôgo Prefecture
land and the abstract shapes of the islands and Alexandria. A map of Portugal, in Important Cultural Property
of Shikoku and Kyushu are in fact closer place of cities, occupies part of the first European trade with Japan in the six-
to a map of Japan published by the Jesuits and second panels from the right. The de- teenth century brought with it more than
in the 16405 than to any European prece- pictions of these cities and figures are de- Chinese silks and other foreign goods
dents that the Japanese might have seen rived primarily from a map of the world by bought with Japanese silver. With the mer-
in the sixteenth century. The earliest pos- Willem Blaeu (1571-1638), published in chants came Catholic missionaries, and
ru ers
sible date for this type of map, therefore, 1606-1607. The l °f England and the propagation of the new faith required
would be the 1630$ or 16405, later than the China represented in Blaeu's map are sacred images for instruction and devo-
proposed Momoyama-period date by al- missing in the Imperial screen, however; tion. Japanese interest in Western painting
most half a century. YS the view of Rome comes from Vita Beati did not, however, focus only on devotional
patris Ignatii Loyolae, a biography of Saint images. Instructed by Jesuit artists, Japa-
111 Twenty-eight cities and myriad Ignatius published in Antwerp in 1610. nese painters began to explore techniques
countries The map of Portugal can be traced to and materials by copying the European art
pair of eight-fold screens, ink and color Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Or- made available to them. Although the sub-
on paper telius (1527-1598), first published in 1570 ject is foreign, the martial theme and lav-
each 194.8 x 516.3 and reprinted four more times by 1612. ish coloring of this work are in keeping
Momoyama or Edo period, iyth On the two outer panels of the other with the tastes of a Momoyama-period dai-
century screen are pairs of men and women from myo.
forty-two countries, in native dress, and on The screen consists of two facing
Imperial Household Collection the six panels in between, a map of the pairs of equestrian rulers of Christian and
world; these depictions are close to the
In the Momoyama period, folding screens Muslim nations. The figures have been
showing maps of the entire world or de- 1606-1607 Blaeu map. In the Blaeu map, tentatively identified as (from right to left)
tailed representations of particular distant however, scenes from only thirty countries a Tartar ruler, a Russian czar, a Turkish sul-
forty-
are included, though couples from
places were made to satisfy a fascination two countries can be seen in another map tan, and the Holy Roman emperor Ru-
with an outside world that until then had dolph II. With only minor deviations, four
been unknown. by Blaeu, in which the world is divided be- figures correspond to the third (from
This set is the largest among such ex- tween two circles, published either in 1619 right), fourth, seventh, and eighth rulers
1645. In the lower part of the
or around
tant screens. Along the top of each panel fourth panel of this screen is a framed in- depicted in the upper portion of one of
of one screen are eight mounted figures in the pair of screens in the Imperial House-
four opposing pairs. They have been iden- set containing an allegorical representa- hold (cat. 111). Models for these figures
tified as, from the right, the rulers of Per- tion of the Four Continents: Europe (a were drawn from different, unrelated
seated woman) is flanked on the
left by the
sia, Abyssinia, Tartary, Moscow, France sources, such as the small prints of Twelve
(Henry IV), Spain (Philip II), Turkey, and New World (two figures wearing feathered Roman Emperors, c. 1590, by Adriaen Col-
the Holy Roman Empire (Rudolf II). The headdresses) and on the right by Asia (two laert (c. 1560-1618), and the figures of
third and fourth, seventh and eighth fig- figures with a camel) and Africa (a figure rulers on a map of the world by Willem
framed inset,
with a crocodile). In another
ures appear also, only minutely altered, in Blaeu (1571-1638), which was brought from
catalogue 112. In vertical rows beneath the at the bottom of the sixth panel, are canni- Holland and known in Japan during the
bals from Brazil. AY first decade of the seventeenth century.
181