This dissertation addresses the topic of cross-cultural and interfaith aesthetics. The subject of the dissertation is a specific type of Japanese folding screens with European images, produced in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century at Japanese workshops affiliated with the Jesuit mission. These folding screens are “hybrid” artworks that encompass contemporary cultures of Momoyama Japan and early modern Catholic Europe. How did the artists comprise the two traditions to create a coherent and meaningful image? What was the folding screens' role in the cross-cultural and interfaith interactions between Japanese and Europeans? How do we understand and appreciate them in the twenty-first century? I argue that on these screens, the artists successfully presented traditions of East and West in concordance; divergent artistic traditions and aesthetic sensibilities co-exist without commingling or overcoming each other, and non-Christian and Christian viewers could appreciate the screens on their own terms. For the modern viewers, our aesthetic experience of the artwork rests upon appreciating this concordance. Furthermore, historical sources indicate that the Jesuits used the folding screens as gifts to Japanese warlords. The Jesuits also intended to display the screens at their residences, where they received local visitors daily. The hybrid folding screens were important gift item for the missionaries. As a bridge across cultures and religions, the gift conveyed sender's goodwill to initiate conversation and friendship with the recipient.

To proceed with my argument, in chapter one, I clarify the problems concerning the study of hybrid art and review the state of research about Jesuit-affiliated art production in Japan. In chapter two, I explore new methodologies to forward our understanding of hybrid art. In chapter three, I examine a pair of Jesuit folding screens known as Europeans Playing Music and elucidate the concordance of aesthetic sensibilities. In chapter four, I study the context of Jesuit mission activities in Japan and address the problems regarding their interfaith relationship with the Japanese. In chapter five, I discuss the notion of interfaith aesthetics and illumine the role of Jesuit folding screens in cross-cultural and interfaith interactions between the Japanese and the Jesuits.