Cryptomeria root carved Namban figure, dating from Japan’s Momoyama Period. Characterised by unusual double faces, it features on one side a Jesuit priest, in customary cassock and cape and, on the other, a merchant in ruff collar.

Carved from a single skull, the figures face in opposite directions, suggesting distinct worldly conceptions, antagonistic attitudes, and distinct worldviews. The eyes are almond-shaped, of oriental features and, as conventionally adopted in westerner’s depictions, their noses are broad. Diverging in the expressive appearance and mouth grin, the figures facial traits describe a gloomy and saddened missionary of semi close mouth, and a rejoicing merchant, in an allusion to his trade that supposedly means profit and wealth.

Inspired by the double face iconography of the God Janus from Antiquity – who represented the Time that guided mankind, to misfortune and suffering on one side, and to good fortune and happiness on the other - in this instance the imagery alludes to relationships of interdependence, but also of antagonism, between the activities of Portuguese merchants and the theoretical principles of Jesuit practises in Japan.

According to reports compiled by the Portuguese Jesuit missionary Luís Fróis (1532-1597)[1], in 1587 the unifier daimyo Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598) published the anti-Christian Hakata edict decreeing the expulsion of missionaries, giving them 20 days to abandon the archipelago. In contrast to this banishment, all merchants were welcome to remain in the islands, as Hideyoshi’s intension was not to close off the country to the outside world[2]. For this effect, Portuguese ships were forbidden to take along any priests, or any such person that could preach Christianity.

State security and propagation of false doctrine were the arguments presented by Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616), the shogun that succeeded Hideyoshi, on decreeing the termination of the existing relations with the Portuguese. As such, in 1614 he published a new edict determining the expulsion of missionaries. In 1639 would eventually come the end of commercial exchanges and the expulsion of the Portuguese merchants.

The antagonizing aspect and the contrasting countenance between the two figures faces, provoke some reflection on the contents of Luís Fróis letters, in which, on the subject of Hakata’s Edict, he states that it has caused “(…) in every priest and Christian, such sadness and sentiment, that amongst them nothing was ever heard but wailing and groaning (…)”[3], as opposed to the merry merchants that could still trade in those lands for a few more years.

Teresa Peralta

[1] Luís Fróis was a Jesuit priest that lived in Japan for 34 years, and who described 16th century Japanese society and cultural events, in letters send to Macao, to Rome and to the Portuguese King.

[2] Lucas Miguel Brandão da Silva, “A Representação do Povo Japonês através dos relatos do Jesuíta Luís Fróis” in Anais do 20º Encontro de História da Anpuh – Rio, Rio de Janeiro, 2022; Lúcio de Sousa, “As Questões Militares no Comércio entre Macau e Nagasáqui em 1587”, in Revista de Cultura, nº 27, Julho de 2008, p. 33.

[3] IDEM, ibidem.