From the latter half of the 16th century through the beginning of the 17th century, the Japanese dubbed the ships from Portugal and Spain, Namban ships, or foreign ships that approached from the south. These ships were responsible for bringing important cultural artifacts from the West to the shores of Japan. In addition to their bulk cargo, these ships also carried human cargo in the form of Catholic priests who spread Christianity to Japan. These objects and people brought about the flourishing of Namban culture and art in Japan.

The Western Kings on Horseback screens are renowned as masterpieces of Namban art and early Western-style painting from Japan’s Momoyama period. These screens, split today between the collections of the Kobe City Museum and the Suntory Museum of Art, are said to have originally been wall paintings in Aizu-Wakamatsu Castle. It is posited that they were painted by Japanese painters who studied Western painting methods along with Christianity at the Jesuit seminary in Japan, and that they were painted for the Jesuit priests.

The depictive methods seen in these paintings reveal the perspectival and shading methods actively learned by these Japanese painters from their Western contemporaries. And yet, today major mysteries still remain about the process by which these Japanese painters who studied these Western painting methods at the seminary came to create such monumental works as the Western Kings on Horseback screens.

Thanks to the special cooperation of the National Research Institutes for Cultural Properties, Tokyo, these screens have been subjected to a complete survey by high-definition digital photography and thorough pigment analysis. The results of these studies will be on display in this exhibition.

It is our great hope that through a thorough viewing of these rarely seen masterpieces of early Western-style painting, Namban screens and other Namban arts born from the early interaction of East and West, visitors will come to fully understand the light and shadows, the triumphs and the tragedy, the myriad aspects of the pre-modern Japanese era as experienced by the priests and early Japanese Christians.