A Global Eye: the perception of place in a pair of Tokugawa world map screens / Mia M. Mochizuki.

Extract from Japan Review 29 (2016): 69 – 119.

A pair of screens depicting a World Map with Cityscapes and Rulers in the Museum of the Imperial Collections, Tokyo, has long complicated the notion of place in cultural interpretation between East and West. Painted in the Jesuit workshop in Japan (c. 1583–1614), and in a customary Japanese format, this pair of screens has been considered primarily in relation to Japanese art, despite being produced by Western and Western-trained artists, using Western materials and pictorial sources, and guided by Western aspirations. This article moves beyond the identification of sources to offer an analysis of the Western, Jesuit intentions for these screens as part of an attempt to reconsider early modern European art within its original global context. It draws upon an early-twentieth-century epistolary parallel to sixteenth-century cross-cultural exchange—the correspondence between two scholars who steered the course of the discipline of art history in East and West, Yashiro Yukio (1890–1975) and Bernard Berenson (1865–1959). The present study applies Yashiro’s use of the determinative detail to examine the Western framework for the production of these screens using four historical registers of place: the place of desire, the composition of place, the contempt for the world, and the index of place. An interdisciplinary approach to cultural contact, via early modern European geography, theology, philosophy, and anthropology demonstrates how one object’s response to shifting notions of what constituted the world highlights some of the same contradictions that have hindered the construction of a truly global art history beyond national stakes alone.

Keywords: art (Renaissance and Baroque), global art history, Bernard Berenson, Yashiro Yukio 矢代幸雄, cartography, world maps, Portuguese eastern trade routes, Edo. Also: Bankoku ezu byōbu 万国絵図屏風, Japanese screens, Namban byōbu 南蛮屏風, Jesuit maps in Japan.

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Local access dig.pdf. [Mochizuki-Global eye.pdf] 

Jesuit art / Mia M. Mochizuki.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 192-219)

Part 1: Introduction 1 - 1.1 Jesuit Art 1 1.2 Context 27 - 1.3 Resources 31 - 1.4 Rationale 38 - Part 2: Sources 40 - 2.1 A “Jesuit Style”? 40 - 2.2 The Spiritual Exercises (Exercitia spiritualia) 61 - 2.3 The Evangelicae historiae imagines 78 - 2.4 The Imago primi saeculi Societatis Iesv 99 - Part 3: Contributions 118 - 3.1 The Networked Image 118 - 3.2 The Technological Image 138 - 3.3 The Subjective Image 164 - Part 4: In Place of a Conclusion 186 - 4.1 What If There Was No Jesuit Art? 186 - Bibliography 192

In Jesuit Art, Mia Mochizuki considers the artistic production of the pre-suppression Society of Jesus (1540-1773) from a global perspective. Geographic and medial expansion of the standard corpus changes not only the objects under analysis, it also affects the kinds of queries that arise. Mochizuki draws upon masterpieces and material culture from around the world to assess the signature structural innovations pioneered by Jesuits in the history of the image. When the question of a 'Jesuit style' is rehabilitated as an inquiry into sources for a spectrum of works, the Society's investment in the functional potential of illustrated books reveals the traits that would come to define the modern image as internally networked, technologically defined, and innately subjective.

Mia Mochizuki draws upon masterpieces and material culture from around the world to show how the pre-suppression Society of Jesus (1540-1773) pioneered structural innovations in the history of the image. ; Readership: All interested in early modern, religious, and global art history, and anyone concerned with Renaissance and Baroque art and architecture, Jesuit studies, and the world-wide circulation of prints. Keywords: Renaissance art, Baroque art, religious art, Jesuit art and architecture, global art history, print history, 1540-1773, Jesuit style, Spiritual Exercises, Evangelicae historiae imagines, Imago primi saeculi Societatis Iesu, Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Xavier.

Local access dig.pdf. [Mochizuki-Jesuit art.pdf]

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