Autumn Special Exhibition The Westward Gaze:
Warrior Lords and the Taste for Items from Foreign Lands

European merchants who advanced into East Asia during pre-modern times brought merchandise and gifts to Japan, by way of China and Southeast Asia. Japanese people referred to these objects as nanban ("from the Southern barbarians") or oranda ("from Holland") items depending on which Europeans brought them, and received them as new cultural assets that conveyed the tastes of foreign cultures. Items related to Japanese-European trade that were passed down in the Owari Tokugawa family, which was the foremost of the three Tokugawa branch families, include some of the rarest objects to be found in Japan, which may indicate that they were obtained by special routes. This exhibition introduces Japanese-European trade-related items in this important collection of the Owari Tokugawa family, together with items and documents passed down in some other families.