Japan, Double-leaf screen, Chinese merchants, Edo period.

At the beginning of the 19th century, while the Tokugawa had been implementing the sakoku policy for over a century, Nagasaki remained the only link between Japan and foreign countries. The narrow enclosure of the Tōjin yashiki, reserved for Chinese merchants and adjoining the islet of Dejima where the Dutch resided, became the scene of these strictly controlled exchanges. Every year, Chinese junks docked there: they unloaded raw silk, rare fabrics, refined sugar, ginseng and medicinal herbs, then left laden with ceramics, copper and lacquerware.

Confined for three to four months in this closed quarter, the Chinese traders play a pivotal role because they serve as obligatory intermediaries for the Japanese economy and, conversely, supply the Chinese, Asian and sometimes Western markets with Japanese products, thus maintaining a vital bilateral link despite the political compartmentalization.

It is in this context that this two-panel screen was painted, using mineral pigments on paper and placed on a background of gold leaf. The frame is made of black lacquered wood.

It depicts 18th century Chinese merchants .

The first two merchants, richly wrapped in heavy cloaks, advance preceded by two gorals with dark fur punctuated with light spots. Gorals are mountain goats from Central Asia. It is a direct allegory of the "Poem of the Blue Goats" by the Qianlong Emperor, which celebrates the sovereign fragility and controlled vigor of these beasts, symbols of the conquest of Xinjiang and the civilizing power of the Qing regime ("Remaining masters of the rock, these goats bend without ever bending").

Behind them, two other traders, their coats in brighter hues, walk alongside a child holding a lively-looking dog on a leash. The boy embodies the family tradition of trading and the desire for a lasting business, while the dog, with its vigilance, serves as a reminder of the contractual loyalty necessary in a strictly regulated exchange.

Stylistically, this byōbu is part of the tradition of kara-e, a Chinese-style painting that enjoyed a revival of interest in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Produced on large formats such as screens, it draws its subjects from the visual world of imperial China: scenes of scholars, classical landscapes, symbolic animals, and episodes from mythology. Unlike yamato-e, which celebrates specifically Japanese themes, kara-e demonstrates a precise knowledge of the aesthetic codes, historical narratives, and social representations of the Manchu world.

At this time, we also observe a reinterpretation of certain motifs from the Namban style – specific to the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. The Namban style, which had introduced into Japanese painting the spectacular image of Portuguese merchants arriving in Japan, with their costumes, boats, and exotic animals, is reinvested in a new framework. The screen presented here, although fully kara-e in its pictorial treatment and its explicit reference to imperial China, maintains a formal and iconographic dialogue with these Namban screens. The figure of the Portuguese merchant has been replaced by that of the Chinese trader.

This parallel is not anecdotal. It reveals that, just as namban-e had been a way of depicting the novelty and importance of trade with Europe at the beginning of the Edo period, kara-e seized on the motif of the Chinese merchant to visually inscribe the renewed centrality of China in Japan's commercial and cultural exchanges under sakoku. Their integration is therefore not a simple fascination with foreigners, but a learned and economic logic: that of representing, through codified visual means, an outside world perceived as a legitimate source of commercial references. Despite the limitation, after 1764, to eleven Chinese junks per year, the volume of their trade remained three to five times greater than that of the Dutch on Dejima. The products exported from Japan were resold in China but also to Westerners.

Developed by the court workshops, in particular the Kano school, this repertoire then conquered the homes of merchants and provincial governors, eager to affirm their success by acquiring pieces influenced by Manchu culture.

Kara-e screens, which became symbols of prosperity, were a daily reminder of the delicate balance between the political closure of sakoku and economic dependence on the outside world.

Height: 172.5 total width 190cm, thickness 2cm