16th century images of Japanese garden art: analysis of the jesuit's texts published in Portugal

Mestrado em Arquitetura Paisagista - Instituto Superior de AgronomiaThe dissertation theme focus on how the Portuguese Jesuit manuscripts describe Japanese gardens for the first time in Europe. This research belongs to a larger project led by Cristina Castel-Branco since 2012 and applied to cities and landscapes that have been described during the 16th century by the Portuguese Jesuits. The first Missionary group arrived in Japan in 1549 led by Saint Francis Xavier (1506-1552). During their stay (1549-1643), they wrote numerous letters to the remaining members of the Company of Jesus and a few books reporting the progression of the Japanese Mission. In these documents they described the country they saw and gave their opinion on the local daily practices. The data obtained for the research project was supplied by paragraphs of texts containing information on Japanese garden, cities and landscapes, found within these texts, which are the most relevant 16th century documents published in Portugal on the subject. The findings of the present work confirms that the Jesuits writings contain significant information on Japanese garden art and make it possible the comparison between the images found and the images of the 16th century Japanese garden produced in Japan. Garden art and theory was analysed to provide a background of how the gardens observed by the Jesuits were and had evolved trough time. The selected passages describe the gardens of the powerful personalities and institutions of the time. Some of these places have survived until the present day, and were visited for the sake of this project. They suggest that the defined programs that label the Japanese gardens of the sixteen century nowadays were more vast and flexible than what is generally acknowledge and may be a contribution for Japanese Garden ArtN/