In the last week of October 2019, Professor Yoshie Kojima of Waseda University, Tokyo, came to LMU with a group of Waseda researchers to participate in the first installment of the DAAD-Waseda sponsored Seminar “Early Modern Sacred Images in Japan and Europe: Contact, Comparison, Conflict.”

Centered on the notion of the sacred image crossing cultures, this joint research seminar investigated the active role of objects and images as agents of religious encounter and conflict between early modern Europe and Japan. The first meeting took place in Munich, where our Waseda visitors encountered Christian religious practices and visual constructions made for local and extra-European consumption through a series of site visits to active Bavarian cult sites such as Altötting, and in close visual analysis of surviving visual remnants of cross-cultural exchange.

This meeting included one guest lecture by Prof. Kojima on Tuesday 29 October and one workshop which brought together the Waseda and LMU teams on Thursday 31 October afternoon to discuss five themes and aspects of sacred images in cross-cultural comparison: PRINTS, RELICS, COPIES, AFTERLIFE, TECHNIQUES. 

—

PROGRAM

MUNICH GUEST LECTURE: Tuesday 29 October, 12:00-14:00 c.t. Hauptgebäude, Prof.-Huber-Pl. 2 (W), LEHRTURM-W201

Prof. Dr. Yoshie Kojima, Waseda University (Tokyo)

Christian spaces and private devotion in Japan: altars and images of the “Hidden Christians”

In the framework of the Vorlesung on “Sacred Spaces and Private Devotion in Premodern Europe from Giotto to Bernini” (Prof. Dr. Chiara Franceschini)

MUNICH WORKSHOP: Thursday 31 October, 15:00-19:00, Institut für Kunstgeschichte, LMU, Zentnerstr. 31, Raum 405

15:00-15:10 — Welcome: Chiara Franceschini

PRINTS — 15:10-15:50

Yoshie KOJIMA, Professor, Department of Art History. Use of Flemish prints for the Namban screen representing European pastoral imagery and its concealed meaning

Respondents: Chiara Franceschini, Nelleke de Vries

RELICS — 15:50-16:30

Mitsuteru NARAYAMA, Assistant Professor, School of Culture, Media and Society. Worship of Buddhist Reliquaries: Return to Shakyamuni and the wish to compensate for a religious sense of inferiority

Respondents: Francesco Mores, Cloe Cavero

COPIES — 16:30-17:10

Suijun RA, Research Associate, Department of Art History. Reproduction of Holiness: the acceptance of miraculous Buddhist images from China in Japan

Respondents: Erin Giffin, Chiara Franceschini

AFTERLIFE — 17:10-17:50

Mayumi KUWABARA, Ph.D. Student, Department of Art History. Purgatory and Salvation: Japanese perceptions of the afterlife in the late 16th century

Respondents: Francesco Mores, Chiara Franceschini

TECHNIQUES — 17:50-18:30

Hiroaki NABARA, M.A. Student, Department of Art History. Artistic and technical similarity between Japanese woodcarving of Kamakura and Spanish polychrome sculpture in the 17th century

Respondents: Cloe Cavero, Chiara Franceschini

18:30-19:00 — Round Table: Waseda Team and LMU Team

Waseda Team in Munich: Yoshie Kojima, Mitsuteru Narayama, Suijun Ra, Mayumi Kuwabara, Hiroaki Nabara, Arika Morimoto

LMU Team in Munich: Chiara Franceschini, Cloe Cavero, Erin Giffin, Nelleke de Vries, Miriam Kreischer, Christina Vetter, Francesco Mores