Southern Barbarians

A large Portuguese trading ship with a full crew draws near to land, about to dock as locals and Westerners alike await its arrival at the port of Nagasaki on Japan's southernmost island of Kyushu. Later, the foreigners have made their way into town and are about to call at the settlement set up there by their fellow countrymen, many of whom were Christian missionaries. Such screens presenting the arrival and activity of the Portuguese in Japan are known as namban (southern barbarian) screens, the term applied to these visitors ever since they first came to Japan from their Southeast Asian trading bases, some as far away as Malacca on the Malay Peninsula.