Paola Cavaliere is Associate Professor of Japanese Studies and Associate Director of the Human Sciences Undergraduate Degree Program at Osaka University, School of Human Sciences. She holds a double graduate degree in East Asian Studies (University of Sheffield, UK) and Law (Tohoku University, Japan). She specializes in gender in contemporary Japanese religious civil society and has published variously on women’s faith-based volunteering in post-disaster Japan. In 2004 she initiated the Azuchi Castle Folding Screen research project and conducted a three-year investigation on primary and secondary sources in the Vatican, Italy, and Japan. Her findings are published in the article ‘Azuchijō no zu byōbu: the Azuchi Castle Folding Screen’ (2008). She is a founding member of the ASRN (Azuchi Screens Research Network) established in 2017 and supervises its core research activities.

Kiyono Shimbo is a Lecturer and Research Fellow at the Graduate School of Chiba University. She obtained her Ph.D. at Chiba University, Japan in 2001, with her doctoral thesis on Marian imagery in processional banners during the pestilence crisis in Rome during Urban VIII. In 2001-2004, she studied at the University of Rome "La Sapienza" conducting historical research on the visual culture of Roman Baroque as a Postdoctoral Fellow for JSPS Research Abroad. From 2005 onward, she has taught Western art history in various universities in Japan, along with collaboration for Casabella Japan since 2008. Recently, she proceeds her studies on imagery of poverty, casualties, and female warriors in Early Modern Italy.

Mark K Erdmann, Ph.D. is a Lecturer in Art History at the University of Melbourne in Melbourne, Australia. Erdmann specializes in Japanese pre-modern architecture, particularly of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, and the intersection of space, painting, carpentry, and power. His research focuses on castles, warrior elite residences, palaces, as well as the Jesuit mission in Japan and their impact on visual culture. He received his doctorate from Harvard University in 2016 and Masters from the University of London in 2001. He is currently working on a book manuscript tentatively titled Azuchi Castle: Oda Nobunaga and the Origins of the Japanese Castle. He is also working on an annotated translation of Shōmei (Elucidation of the Craft), a secret sixteenth-century architectural manual written by Heinouchi Masanobu.

Anton Schweizer is a professor of art and architectural history at Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan. At the center of his research is the employment of artifacts in space during Japan’s late medieval and early modern periods. He works on-site planning and architectural decoration in the widest sense, issues of materiality, and depictions of works of architecture in painting. This focus is accompanied by a strong interest in issues of materiality, manufacturing technologies, and temporality as well as transcultural picture migration and export art (especially lacquer). Anton Schweizer received his Ph.D. from Heidelberg University and has taught at universities in Germany (Heidelberg), the US (NYU, Tulane), and Japan (Kyushu University). He presently works on two projects. One concerns exchanges of material and visual cultures between East Asia, Europe, and the Americas in the First Global Age (1500 to 1700). The second project is on courtesan culture and its manifestations in architecture and ukiyo-e prints during Japan’s early modern period.

Gen Aihara is the general manager at Hiroshi Sugimoto studio. He works for Sugimoto since 1999. He traveled with Sugimoto for assisting in photographing Quatro Ragazzi, Opera House among other series.  Gen was born in Shiga prefecture where Azuchi Castle ruin is located. Received his MFA from SUNY - Purchase in 1999. Active as an artist as well.