The Black Ship as a Compositional Anchor
The Portuguese nao is the hinge that organizes every Nanban screen it appears on.
Portuguese sailorsThe Black Ship (kurofune)The captain (capitão-mor)Waves and sea
Essays
Readings attached to motifs across the corpus.
Gold Leaf and the Grammar of Nanban Screens
The gold-leaf ground is not a background — it is the medium of the image.
Gold-leaf cloud bands (kin'un)Missionary processionWaves and sea