Portugese arriving in Nagasaki

"Portuguese Arriving in Nagasaki" depicts the historical moment that was Kawakami's primary artistic preoccupation: the arrival of the great Portuguese nao at Nagasaki, the first systematic encounter between Japan and the wider world of European maritime expansion. The Portuguese ships — the largest sailing vessels of their era — arriving in the harbor that would become Japan's window to the world was a moment of irreversible consequence. Kawakami renders it repeatedly because it was, for him, the founding moment of the cross-cultural fascination that animated his entire artistic life.