Arrival of the "Southern Barbarians" (c. 1600): Art, History and Details

Arrival of the "Southern Barbarians" (c. 1600) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This screen and its corresponding screen show Portuguese merchants arriving in Japan, having crossed the oceans in their large ship with a multinational crew. The Portuguese were known in Japan as the “Southern Barbarians” because they arrived from the south and their customs and manners were unfamiliar to the Japanese, who had not encountered anyone from Europe until their first appearance in 1543. In 1639, the Portuguese were forced out of Japan, mainly owing to internal difficulties caused by their Catholic missionaries, but they were a major conduit for both objects and ideas from Europe for nearly 100 years.

Object facts

• Title: Arrival of the "Southern Barbarians"
• Date: c. 1600
• Culture: Japan, Momoyama period (1573–1615)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: One of a pair of six-panel folding screens; ink, color, and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Image: 146.7 x 337.2 cm (57 3/4 x 132 3/4 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Folding screen
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1960.193.2

A detail from the museum

Europeans were called "Southern Barbarians" because their ships arrived in Japan from the south.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Yoshida, Teruji 吉田暎二. Ukiyoe taisei 浮世繪大成. Tokyo 東京: Toho Shoin 東方書院, Showa 昭和 5–6 [1930 –1931].
• Hōun 寳雲, no. 4 (1932): pp. 64–83.
• Buhot, Jean. "Les Paravents Des Portugais: A Propos du Paravent du Musée Guimet." Revue Des Arts Asiatiques 12, no. 2/3 (June-September 1938): 113–124.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.