Nanban period Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description

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Nanban (南蛮 Lit. “Southern barbarian”) is a Japanese word which originally designated people from South Asia and South-East Asia. It followed a Chinese usage in which surrounding “barbarian” people in the four directions had each their own designation.

In Japan, the word took on a new meaning when it came to designate Europeans, the first of whom started to arrive in Japan in 1543, first from Portugal, then Spain, and later Holland and England. The word Nanban was thought naturally appropriate for the new visitors, since they came in by ship from the South, and their manners were considered quite unsophisticated by the Japanese.

A contemporary Japanese account relates: "They eat with their fingers instead of with chopsticks such as we use. They show their feelings without any self-control. They cannot understand the meaning of written characters" (from Boxer, “Christian century”).

Even prominent European observers of the time seemed to agree that the Japanese "excell not only all the other Oriental peoples, they surpass the Europeans as well" (Alessandro Valignano, 1584, "Historia del Principo y Progresso de la Compania de Jesus en las Indias Orientales).

Table of contents

1 The Nanban episode 2 Usages 3 References 4 External links

The Nanban episode

The Japanese were not very impressed with the cultural, or even technological level of their visitors. Japan had grown into a sophisticated feudal society with a high culture and a strong pre-industrial technology.

Japan was more populated and urbanized than any Western country (in the 16th century, Japan had 26 million inhabitants against 16 million for France and 4.5 million for England). She had Buddhist “universities” larger than any learning in institution in the West, such as Oxford or Cambridge.

Her copper and steel were the best in the world, her weapons the sharpest, her military strength recognized: "A Spanish royal decree of 1609 specifically directed Spanish commanders in the Pacific ‘not to risk the reputation of our arms and state against Japanese soldier’" (“Giving up the gun”, Noel Perrin).

Her paper industries were unequaled: the Japanese were blowing their noses in disposable soft "tissue" papers, when most people in the western world still used their sleeves.

One thing the Japanese were definitely interested in was barbarian guns. The first three Europeans to reach Japan were Portuguese and came on a Chinese ship to the southern island of Tanegashima, and they had arquebuses and ammunitions with them. At that time, Japan was right in the middle of a huge civil war called the Sengoku period (Period of the country at war). Strictly speaking, the Japanese were already familiar with gunpowder (invented by, and transmitted from China), and had been using basic Chinese guns and cannon tubes called Tetsuhoo (鉄砲 Lit.”Iron cannon”) for around 270 years before the arrival of the Portuguese. The Portuguese guns however were light, had a matchlock firing mechanism and were easy to aim with.

Within a year, Japanese swordsmiths and ironsmith managed to reproduce the mechanism and mass-produce the guns. Barely fifty years later, "by the end of the 16th century, guns were almost certainly more common in Japan than in any other country in the world", her army equipped with a number of guns dwarfing any contemporary army in Europe (Perrin).

The guns were strongly instrumental in the unification of Japan under Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, as well as in the invasion of Korea in 1592 and 1597.

After the country was pacified and unified by Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1603 however, Japan closed itself to the southern barbarians (except for the trade outpost of Dejima in Nagasaki, for Holland, foreigners were subject to the death penalty), persecuted Christian converts, and almost completely eradicated guns to revert to the more "civilized" sword. Thence started a period of peace, prosperity and mild progress known as the Edo period.

The "barbarians" would come back more than 200 years later strengthened by industrialization, and end Japan's splendid isolation, with the forcible opening of Japan to trade by an American military fleet under the commandement of Commodore Perry in 1854.

Usages

The term Nanban was used extensively for various things Western.

• Nanbanjin (南蛮人) means “Southern barbarian person” and designated all European people.

• Nanbandoo (南蛮胴) designates a type of cuirass covering the trunk in one whole piece, a design imported from Europe.
• Nanbanbijutsu (南蛮美術) generally describes Japanese art with Nanban themes or influenced by Nanban designs.
• Nanbanga (南蛮画) designates the numerous pictorial representations that were made of the new foreigners, and define a whole style category in Japanese art ( See an example at:[1] or [1]
• Nanbannuri (南蛮塗り) describes lacquers decorated in the Portuguese style, and were very popular items from the late 16th century (See example at: [1]).
• Nanbangashi (南蛮菓子) is a variety of cakes derived from Portuguese or Spanish recipies, in particular the popular "Castela" (カステラ) named after Castile. These "Southern barbarian" cakes, often with reproductions of 16th century barbarians in the box design, are on sale in any supermarket in Japan today.

The term Nanban never really disappeared from common usage until the Meiji restoration, when Japan decided to Westernize radically in order to better resist the West, and essentially stopped considering the West as fundamentally uncivilized.

Still, the exact principle of westernization was Wakon-Yoosai (和魂洋才 Lit. Japanese spirit Western talent), which tends to imply that, although technology might be acquired from the West, Japanese spirit is still superior to Western spirit, but probably not to a point overtly justifying the usage of the word “barbarian” anymore...

Today the word Nanban is only used in a historical context, and is essentially felt as picturesque and affectionate. It is can sometimes be used in a cultured jokingly manner to refer to Western people or civilization.

References

"Giving Up the Gun", Noel Perrin, David R. Godine Publisher, Boston. ISBN 0879237732
"Samurai", Mitsuo Kure, Tuttle publishing, Tokyo. ISBN 0804832870
"The Origins of Japanese Trade Supremacy. Development and Technology in Asia from 1540 to the Pacific War", Christopher Howe, The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226354857

External links

Nanban folding screens
Nanban art (Japanese)

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