Discussion entre un prêtre shintoïste et un prêtre de la secte Tendai pour faire valoir les beautés de leurs croyances

Félix Élie Régamey was a French painter and illustrator who accompanied the industrialist and religious scholar Émile Guimet on his 1876 voyage to Japan, producing a series of paintings documenting Japanese religious life that formed the core of Guimet's eventual museum collection. This 1877 painting of a discussion between a Shinto priest and a Tendai Buddhist priest belongs to this series of first-hand documentary paintings of Japanese religious practice. Régamey's images were made with the documentary intent of an ethnographer rather than the romantic fantasy of most Orientalist painters — he was recording actual religious exchanges rather than inventing picturesque scenes. The Guimet Museum holds these as foundational documents of the institution's mission.

Régamey's approach is documentary rather than decorative: the priests' costumes and ritual context are rendered with observational accuracy. The composition likely places the two figures in specific architectural or ceremonial setting. The palette would reflect the actual colors of Japanese religious costume rather than the jeweled orientalist fantasy of Parisian salon painting.