We have lots of commentary from Europeans who visited Japan in the second half of the sixteenth century. Portuguese and Spanish merchants, Jesuits, and eventually Dutch and English traders as well, offered complex and rather nuanced commentary on Japan and Japanese culture.

For example, the Jesuit scholar João Rodrigues wrote about painting, sculpture, architecture, metalsmithing, lacquer, and fans in his Historia da Igreja do ]apiio, partially translated in English as João Rodrigues's Account of Sixteenth-Century Japan.

But Japanese art developed under the influence of a huge range of global forces, including imported works and migrant makers from China and Korea, as well as objects that circulated from as far away as the Mediterranean, so perhaps the archipelago was not as isolated in its long history as is commonly thought.