Artists’ Biographies

Compiled from research conducted by Andrew Maske

Daitsū Bunchi 大通文智

1619–1697

Born Princess Ume no Miya, Daitsū Bunchi was the eldest daughter of Emperor Gomizuno-o (後水尾天皇 1596–1680). She was a devout Buddhist and at the age of twenty-two, after a short-lived arranged marriage at thirteen, became an ordained nun of the Rinzai Zen sect. She took up residence in Enshōji (Temple of Infinite Light), a small temple in northeastern Kyoto, where she spent the next fifteen years. In the 1660s, Bunchi established a convent, named Enshōji as well, south of Nara, which offered Buddhist training to women devotees. Her personal religious practice was marked by asceticism. In addition to calligraphy, Bunchi’s surviving works include clay portrait sculptures, small plaques bearing embroidered characters, and Buddhist figure painting.

Ema Saikō 江馬細香

1787–1861

Ema Saikō was a celebrated literati painter, calligrapher, and writer of kanshi (Chinese poetry). Born to a wealthy family of scholars, her talents in the arts of painting, poetry, and calligraphy were recognized from an early age. Saikō began her training with the Buddhist monk-painter Gyokurin (玉潾 after 1751–after 1814) at the age of thirteen, and she later studied with prominent literati artists including Rai San’yō (頼山陽 1780–1832) and Uragami Shunkin (浦上春琴 1779–1846). She was a central member of several kanshi societies—Hakuō sha, Reiki gin sha, and Kōsai sha—serving as the head of the latter two. Her verses were widely published, and her home in Ōgaki became a destination for literati from around the country.¹ Later in life, Saikō was honored with an invitation to Ōgaki Castle, in recognition of her painting.

Hashimoto Seikō 橋本青江

1821–1898

Hashimoto Seikō was a literati artist known for her calligraphy and painting in the bunjinga style (literati painting). Seikō’s oeuvre consists primarily of landscapes and paintings of plum, bamboo, chrysanthemum, and orchid (collectively known as the Four Gentlemen). She was particularly fond of depicting the latter, which she is said to have cultivated herself. While there are conflicting accounts, Seikō was most likely born to a wealthy family in Osaka. She studied calligraphy with Shinozaki Shōchiku (篠崎 小竹 1781–1851) and painting with Okada Hankō (岡田 半江 1782–1846). Seikō traveled widely throughout Japan, participating in literati circles and mentoring several students, including Kawabe Seiran (河辺青蘭 1868–1931). Her name is listed in the Kokon Nanga yōran (古今南画要覧 Compendium of Nanga painters, past and present), published in 1853. Seikō continued to paint well into her seventies.² But later in life, her mental health declined, and she died in poverty.

Hirata Gyokuon 平田玉蘊

1787–1855

Hirata Gyokuon was a famed professional painter most closely associated with the Maruyama-Shijō school. She was one of only twenty-two women artists commemorated in the publication by Shirai Kayō (白井 華陽 d. 1836), Gajō yōryaku (畫乘要略 Brief overview of the annals of painting [1831]). Born to a well-to-do cotton merchant family in today’s Onomichi, Hiroshima Prefecture, Gyokuon studied painting with literati artist Fukuhara Gogaku (福原 五岳 1730–1799) and later with Hatta Koshū (八田 古秀 1760–1822), a painter of the Shijō school. Following the death of her father, Hirata Gohō (平田五峰), himself a painter, Gyokuon (the second of four daughters) turned to painting to support her family. Her close relationship with the literati artist Rai San’yō (頼山陽 1780–1832) resulted not only in many collaborations but in widespread rumors of romance, which caused a sensation. Her many extant works reveal mastery of a broad range of subjects, including figure paintings in the meticulous brushwork popular in China during the Ming and Qing periods as well as bird-and-flower paintings and other natural subjects, genre scenes, and large-scale murals for temples.

Kaga no Chiyo 加賀千代

1703–1775

Fukuda Chiyo was born in the province of Kaga during Japan’s prosperous Genroku era (1688–1704). She composed her first waka at age seven, and her poems soon became known throughout Japan. She was best known as “Chiyo of Kaga” (Kaga no Chiyo) rather than by her full name. Chiyo became a nun in 1755 and was acclaimed for her haiga, abbreviated paintings that often incorporated haiku inscriptions (a similarly brief, yet profound, form of poetry). Chiyo’s most famous poem, “Morning Glory,” has been quoted and reproduced countless times, both in Japan and abroad. In fact, Chiyo’s hometown of Hakusan has made the morning glory its official flower in her honor.

Kaji of Gion 祇園梶子

1600s–1700s

Kaji’s poetic talents were evident already in childhood, with examples of waka (a classical form of poetry) compositions surviving from her early teens. At the turn of the eighteenth century, she established the Matsuya teahouse in Kyoto’s entertainment district, Gion. The simple teahouse, comprising long wooden benches under thatched eaves, attracted a literary clientele, largely thanks to her renown as a poet and calligrapher. Kaji is said to have occasionally gifted her guests poetry slips (tanzaku) inscribed by her as a souvenir. A collection of Kaji’s waka poetry, Kaji no ha (Mulberry [or Kaji] leaves [or pages]) was published in 1707 by Miyazaki Ameishi (d. 1758). While she never married, Kaji adopted a gifted child, Yuri, who ultimately went on to manage the teahouse and became a famous poet and calligrapher in her own right.³ They, along with Yuri’s daughter, Gyokuran, came to be known as the Three Women of Gion.

Kamei Shōkin 亀井少琴

1798–1857

Kamei Shōkin was born into a prosperous family of Confucian scholars who served the daimyo of Fukuoka. At the age of nine, her calligraphy was shown at a local exhibition; at eighteen, she published a volume of ninety-four verses. Shōkin was listed in the 1831 Gajō yōryaku (Summary of painting criticism) and in the 1853 Kokon Nanga yōran (Compendium of Nanga painters, past and present). She was likely self-taught, turning to painting copybooks, which were prevalent in the Edo period.⁴ Shōkin and her husband, Kamei Raishu (亀井雷首 1789–1852), an artist and a student of her father’s, produced many collaborative works (gassaku), with Shōkin executing the painting and Raishu adding a poetic inscription. Although she rarely traveled, her fame spread, with Nanga painters, poets, and calligraphers traveling to her in Kyushu. After Raishu’s death, in 1852, Shōkin ran the family school. Of the twenty enrolled students, seven were girls.⁵

Katō Seiko 加藤青湖

Active 1800s

Little is known about the artist Katō Seiko. An inscription on her painting in the collection of the Denver Art Museum, Sparrows and Bamboo, dates the work to 1872 and indicates she produced it in Kyoto. Her few surviving works depict bird-and-flower subjects and reveal mastery of the boneless (Japanese, mokkotsu; Chinese, mogu 沒骨) style of painting.

Kiyohara Yukinobu 清原雪信

1643–1682

Kiyohara Yukinobu was a prolific painter active in Kyoto in the early Edo period and a descendent of the centuries-long Kanō artistic lineage. Her mother, Kuni (国), was the niece of Kanō Tan’yū (狩野 探幽 1602–1674), one of the major artists of the Kanō school of painting. Her father, Kusumi Morikage (久隅守景 c. 1620–1690), was Tan’yū’s disciple. Yukinobu displayed rare talent from an early age and likely studied directly with Tan’yū. She married a fellow painter and student of Tan’yū’s, Kiyohara Morihiro (dates unknown). As part of the extended Kanō school, Yukinobu carried out commissions from the ruling warrior class, gaining fame and recognition in her own time.

As a professional painter, Yukinobu was trained in yamato-e (Japanese painting, a genre dating back to the Heian period) as well as Chinese academic styles (landscapes, bird-and-flower, and paintings of beauties), gracefully merging and alternating between the two in her works. Her extant paintings boast a wide range of subject matter and an evident focus on female figure paintings, both historical and mythological, from Japan’s and China’s lore.

Kō (Ōshima) Raikin 高(大島)来禽

Active late 1700s

Kō (Ōshima) Raikin was a Kyoto poet and a painter in the Chinese academic style. She specialized in bird-and-flower subjects and landscape paintings. Serving as a lady-in-waiting in the household of a Confucian scholar, she was well versed in Chinese poetry, calligraphy, and painting. Raikin often collaborated with her husband, the painter and seal carver Kō Fuyō (高芙蓉 1722–1784), adhering to Chinese Qing dynasty models.

Kuroda Kōryō 黒田光良

1823–1895

Kuroda Kōryō was a Kyoto potter and a follower and collaborator of Buddhist nun-artist Ōtagaki Rengetsu (太田垣蓮月 1791–1875). After Rengetsu’s death, Kōryō continued making works in her style, assuming the name Rengetsu II (二代 太田垣連月).⁶ In his practice, Kōryō used wheel throwing, molding, as well as a combination of the two.

Miwa Teishin 三輪貞信

1809–1902

Miwa Teishin was a Late Edo–Meiji period poet, calligrapher, and Buddhist nun. She was born in Kyoto to the ceramicist Aoki Mokubei (青木木米 1767–1833), making a name for herself as a geiko dancer in Kyoto’s Gion entertainment district. She later left the profession and married. After her husband’s death, Teishin became a nun. She studied poetry and calligraphy with Kagawa Kageki (香川景樹 1768–1843) and Ōtagaki Rengetsu (太田垣蓮月 1791–1875), and in 1894 published a volume of poetry titled Yomogi ga tsuyu (蓬がつゆ Artemisia in rain). Teishin was the founder of a private school called the Kōfūsha.

Murase Myōdō 村瀬明道

1924–2013

Murase Myōdō was born to a rice merchant in Aichi Prefecture as the fifth of nine children. At nine, she entered the Rinzai Zen temple Kōgenji in Kyoto and spent the next several years training at various convents. She returned to Kōgenji in 1943, eventually becoming head of Gesshinji in Ōtsu city in 1975. There, Myōdō became famous for her vegetarian cuisine, prepared with the deep mindfulness characteristic of Zen discipline. In 1963, at the age of thirty-nine, Myōdō was hit by a car and left paralyzed on the right side of her body. She learned to write calligraphy with her left, nondominant hand. The majority of Myōdō’s extant works are executed with a large brush.

Nakabayashi Seishuku 中林清淑

1829–1912

Nakabayashi Seishuku was a literati painter in Kyoto specializing in ink painting of plum blossoms and bamboo. The third daughter of the well-known literati artist Nakabayashi Chikutō (中林竹洞 1776–1853), she participated in the literati circles of the time. She produced collaborative works (gassaku) with prominent artists including Noguchi Shōhin (野口小蘋 1847–1917) and Okuhara Seiko (奥原晴湖 1837–1913).⁷ She was recorded in the 1880 Meika shoga shunju jo (名家書画春秋帖 Spring and autumn album of calligraphy and painting by the masters).

Nakayama Miya 中山三屋

1840–1871

Nakayama Miya was a Buddhist nun, poet, painter, and loyalist who traveled widely and was a central figure in literati circles. Born in Kyoto to a shogunate retainer, by the age of six or seven she had recited her classical waka poems at adult competitions.⁸ She soon began training with Kagawa Kagetsune (香川景恒 1823–1865/1866), son of Kagawa Kageki (香川景樹 1768–1843), who taught Ōtagaki Rengetsu (太田垣蓮月 1791–1875) and Takabatake Shikibu (高畠式部 1785–1881). Her mother died when she was twelve, and she took the tonsure at fourteen. As a nun, Miya traveled freely, keeping a diary of her meetings with more than four hundred poets, artists, collectors, and poetry lovers. In 1871, while traveling in Kyūshū, she fell ill and passed away at the young age of thirty-one.

Noguchi Shōhin 野口小蘋

1847–1917

Noguchi Shōhin was one of the foremost Meiji literati painters. Her work was included in major exhibitions around the world, and she was named an official artist of the imperial household, the highest formal recognition for a Japanese artist. She was born in 1847 to a physician in Osaka. From the age of four, she showed an affinity for brushwork, and she began taking lessons from the painter Ishigaki Tōsan (石垣 東山 1804–1876) at eight. In 1862, when she was sixteen, her father died, and Shōhin supported her family with her painting.

Shōhin and her mother settled in Kyoto in 1867, where she became the student of the prominent Nanga painter Hine Taizan (日根対山 1813–1869). She also gained the attention of the budding statesman Kido Takayoshi, who invited her to observe the enthronement ceremony of the Meiji emperor in 1868 with him and his family.⁹ In 1871, Shōhin relocated to Tokyo, and in 1873, she was commissioned to paint eight fusuma (sliding door) panels for the sleeping quarters of the Japanese empress.

In 1875, she went to the town of Kōfu, where she met Noguchi Masaakira, and they were married in 1877. A few years later, after a failed business venture, they moved to Tokyo, where Shōhin’s artistic talents again became her family’s main source of support. In 1889, she was appointed Professor of Painting at the Peeresses’ Girls School (which later became part of the educational institution Gakushūin University). That same year, her work was exhibited at both the Fourth Exposition Universelle in Paris and the Japan Art Association (Nihon bijutsu kyōkai) exhibition, receiving an honorable mention at the latter. In 1893, one of her landscape paintings won a prize at the Chicago World’s Fair. In 1899, she was asked to instruct female members of the imperial court in painting, including imperial consort Fusako. In 1901, Shōhin was asked to paint fusuma panels for the imperial palace, and around 1904, she was named an official artist of the imperial household. Shōhin passed away in February 1917 at the age of seventy-one.

Nonoguchi Ryūho 野々口立圃

1595–1669

Nonoguchi Ryūho is considered the progenitor of the haiga genre of painting, wherein a simple yet evocative picture is paired with a short poem like a haiku,¹⁰ and haibun, a combination of prose and poetry (prosimetric composition).

Oda Shitsushitsu 織田瑟瑟

1779–1832

Oda Shitsushitsu was a painter of the Mikuma school of painting, which focused on cherry blossoms (sakura). A descendant of the sixteenth-century warlord Oda Nobunaga (織田信長 1534–1582), one of Japan’s Three Great Unifiers, Shitsushitsu had access to education in the arts from a young age. She studied with painter Mikuma Rokō (三熊露香 active late 1700s), herself a pupil of Shijō school founder Matsumura Goshun (松村月渓 1752–1811).

Ōhashi-dayū (The Tayū Ōhashi) 大橋太夫

Active 1700s

Ōhashi-dayu (“Grand Courtesan” Ōhashi) was known not only for her beauty and grace but for her elegant calligraphy. Active in the mid-eighteenth century, Ōhashi was raised in a fairly well-to-do warrior-class family and trained in music, poetry, tea ceremony, and incense appreciation. Her father lost his commission, however, and she was sold to the Shimabara pleasure quarters in Kyoto to help repay her family’s debts. She was eventually able to leave and marry a man who shared her love of the classical arts.¹¹ After his death, she became a Buddhist nun.

Ōishi Junkyō 大石順教

1888–1968

Ōishi Junkyō had begun a promising career as a geigi dancer in Osaka, but at age seventeen, she survived a brutal attack wherein both of her arms were severed. After recovering from her injuries, she worked in a traveling theatrical group, singing ballads, dancing, and performing comical storytelling. One day, after watching a canary feed its chicks with its beak, she was inspired to try to write by holding a brush in her mouth. She retired from the stage shortly thereafter and devoted herself to the study of painting and poetry.

Junkyō married the calligrapher-painter Yamaguchi Sōhei (山口草平 1882–1961) in 1912 and had two children. The couple later divorced, and Junkyō supported herself and her children through painting and calligraphy. She also offered a counseling service for people with disabilities. In 1933, at age forty-five, she officially took the tonsure at Kongobūji on Mount Kōya. Three years later, she moved into the Shingon temple Kanshūji in Yamashina, where she continued to counsel people with disabilities and teach about Buddhism. In 1947, Junkyō founded the small temple of Bukkōin, where she lived the rest of her life.

Okuhara Seiko 奥原晴湖

1837–1913

Okuhara Seiko was born to an upper-level samurai family in Koga, north of Edo (now Tokyo). Seiko studied literature, calligraphy, and the martial arts and was a student of painter Hirata Suiseki (枚田水石 1796–1863). The Koga domain did not allow women to move elsewhere except with a family member, so Seiko was nominally adopted by an aunt who lived in an adjacent domain. Not coincidentally, that domain had no such movement restrictions on women, so a mere three days after arriving at the aunt’s home in the spring of 1865, Seiko departed for Edo.

Seiko soon began attracting followers and, in 1871, established the school Shun’yōgakujuku, with a dormitory for women pupils. The prominent Meiji statesman Kido Takayoshi (木戸孝允 1833–1877) patronized Seiko, and in 1872, he arranged for the artist to have an audience with the Japanese empress, making Seiko the first female artist to do so.

Notedly, when the Meiji government issued an edict in 1871 that men had to cut their traditional topknots, Seiko took the opportunity to cut their own hair short as well. Seiko was also known for wearing dark kimono typical of men’s apparel.¹² While the signature in the artist’s earliest paintings bears the feminine suffix -joshi (女史 woman scholar/artist), Seiko soon chose to omit it.

Ono no Ozū (or Ono no Otsū) 小野お通

1559/68–before 1650

Not much is known for certain about Ono no Ozū, not even her name (possibly pronounced Otsū). Apparently born to an aristocratic family and orphaned as a child, she was raised in Kyoto, where she exhibited extraordinary talent in poetry, painting, calligraphy, and music. Ozū served as a lady-in-waiting, tutoring women in the Inner Chambers both for shoguns and for the imperial house. She likely served all three of the warlords known as Japan’s Great Unifiers (Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu). Generations of noblewomen emulated Ozū’s graceful style of calligraphy. Her calligraphy was so admired that copybooks of her script were produced and circulated throughout the remainder of the Edo period.¹³ She is known today as one of the greatest women calligraphers of premodern Japan.

Ōtagaki Rengetsu 太田垣蓮月

1791–1875

Ōtagaki Rengetsu was a Buddhist nun and a major figure in Kyoto’s artistic circles, renowned for her waka poetry and ceramics. In her youth, she worked as a lady-in-waiting in the women’s quarters at Kameoka Castle, where she learned classical waka poetry and calligraphy. She took Pure Land Buddhist vows at age thirty-three after being widowed and losing all of her children.

Rengetsu’s name was included in the Heian jinbutsu shi (Record of Heian [Kyoto] notables), and two volumes of her waka were published during her lifetime. She associated with many painters and sometimes inscribed her poems on their paintings. Examples of such joint creations (gassaku) include those done with Mori Kansai (森寛斎 1814–1894), Tomioka Tessai (富岡鉄斎 1836–1924), and Wada Gesshin (和田月心 1800–1870). Midpoint in her career, Rengetsu began creating simple ceramic wares on which she either inscribed her poems with a brush or incised them with a stylus. Her wares were immensely popular in Kyoto, Edo (now Tokyo), and beyond.¹⁴

Although she took her original vows at a Pure Land temple, Rengetsu associated with clergy from various sects. In her later years, she moved into a small hut on the grounds of the Jinkōin temple northwest of Kyoto at the invitation of the chief priest, Wada Gesshin (also known as Gozan), where she lived until her death at age eighty-four. Over her decades-long career, she generated thousands of works of calligraphy, painting, and ceramics.¹⁵ It has been said that at the peak of her popularity in the late 1800s, most households in Kyoto owned at least one example of her work.¹⁶

Ryōnen Gensō 了然元総

1646–1711

Ryōnen Gensō was the daughter of a lady-in-waiting to Empress Tōfukumon’in (東福門院 1607–1678), and she herself served the empress’s granddaughter. She married at seventeen but left her family after ten years and entered the Rinzai Zen imperial convent, Hōkyōji. She eventually went to Edo (now Tokyo), aspiring to study under Tetsugyu Dōki (鐵牛道機 1628–1700). However, she was refused by him on the basis that her beauty would be a distraction to the monks in training. She was also turned away from the temple Daikyūan by the head priest, Hakuō Dōtai (白翁道泰 d. 1682). In a pious act of determination, she pressed a hot iron to her face to devote herself to Zen practice. Taken by her fervor, Dōtai accepted her as a disciple, designating her as his dharma heir in 1680. Gensō later established her own temple, and the priest who had initially refused her, Dōki, presided at the dedication of her Nyoirin Kannon Hall in 1694.

Ryūtei Tanehiko 柳亭種

1783–1842

Ryūtei Tanehiko was the author of Nise Murasaki inaka Genji (A fake Murasaki and country Genji), released in serial format between 1829 and 1842 and one of the most popular examples of Japanese fiction of the nineteenth century.

Sakuragi-dayū (The Tayū Sakuragi) 桜木太夫

Active mid- to late 1800s

Sakuragi (Sakuragi-dayū) was a famous Tayū (grand courtesan) in the Shimabara pleasure quarters in Kyoto, renowned for her calligraphy and poetry. Active during the mid- to late 1800s, Sakuragi-dayū trained with the waka poet No-se Haruomi (能勢 春臣 1808–1862). She was also a poetic collaborator and friend of Ōtagaki Rengetsu (太田垣蓮月 1791–1875). During the period just prior to the Meiji Restoration, she developed a relationship with Itō Hirobumi (伊藤博文 1841–1909), who later became Japan’s first prime minister. Upon hearing of Itō’s assassination in 1909, she became a Buddhist nun.

Tachihara Shunsa 立原春沙

1818–1858

Trained in the Nanga style, Tachihara Shunsa chose to focus primarily on bird-and-flower subjects during her career. Born to a family of Confucian scholars, she studied with the scholar-artist Watanabe Kazan (渡邊崋山 1793–1841). At twenty-five, Shunsa became an attendant for the wife of the Kaga daimyo, whom she served as a painting instructor for seventeen years in Edo (now Tokyo). Shunsa was commissioned to produce sliding-door paintings (fusuma-e) for the courts and castles.

Tagami Kikusha 田上菊舎

1753–1826

Tagami Kikusha was born into a samurai family in Nagato province (now Yamaguchi Prefecture), at the southwestern tip of Honshu Island. She became a widow at twenty-four, at which point she immersed herself in the study and composition of haikai. At twenty-nine, in 1781, after taking the tonsure at the Shin sect Buddhist temple Seikōji in Hagi, she took to traveling. Throughout the next four decades, Kikusha traversed the length of Japan, meeting poets and honing her artistic skills. She became known for her haiga painting, chanoyu (tea ceremony), mastery of the seven-string zither, as well as Chinese verse (kanshi) and waka composition.

Takabatake Shikibu 高畠式部

1785–1881

Takabatake Shikibu was a poet and calligrapher active in Kyoto. She was the adopted daughter of an Osaka physician and studied waka poetry with the poet Kagawa Kageki (香川景樹 1768–1843). Shikibu became known for her painting, sculpture, and music, as well as poetry and calligraphy. After the death of her second husband in 1841, she traveled independently and dedicated her time to artmaking. Shikibu was listed in the Kōto shoga jinmei roku (Record of famous poets and painters in the imperial).¹⁷ She was active well into her nineties.

Takeuchi Shōran 武内小鸞

Active late 1700s–early 1800s

Takeuchi Shōran grew up in Nagato province (present-day Yamaguchi Prefecture) and was active in Kyoto. Although she was very prolific, her birth and death dates remain obscure. Shōran was a student of Maruyama Ōzui (円山応瑞 1766–1829) and Kishi Ganku (岸駒 1749–1839). Earlier in her career, she specialized in bijin-ga (paintings of beautiful women), later painting primarily bird-and-flower subjects.

Tokuyama (Ike) Gyokuran 徳山(池)玉瀾

1727–1784

Tokuyama (Ike) Gyokuran was a renowned literati poet and painter and the youngest of the Three Women of Gion, three generations of poets and calligraphers who ran a famous teahouse in the entertainment quarter Gion in Kyoto. She was born in Kyoto, where her mother, Yuri, and her grandmother, Kaji, before her ran the Matsuya, which was frequented by artists and scholars. She was trained in painting from the age of ten by the literati painter Yanagisawa Ki’en (1703–1758). The Nanga painter Ike Taiga (1723–1776) was a patron of the teahouse, and he and Gyokuran soon developed a close relationship, becoming life partners, although it is unclear whether they formally married.¹⁸ They lived a bohemian lifestyle. Each became renowned for their work, and they produced many collaborative works (gassaku).

Tomioka Haruko 富岡春子

1847–1940

Tomioka Haruko’s paintings are rather rare, although she collaborated with her husband, literati painter and Ōtagaki Rengetsu’s student Tomioka Tessai (富岡鉄斎 1836–1924) on various works by contributing calligraphy.

Tomioka Tessai 富岡鉄斎

1836–1924

When Tomioka Tessai was seven, his father died, and he was sent to be a page at a Shinto shrine. At eighteen, he was taken in by Ōtagaki Rengetsu (太田垣蓮月 1791–1875), who became his primary mentor. With her as an advisor, he studied painting and calligraphy with several noted artists. In 1861, he made a trip to Nagasaki to learn from both Japanese and Chinese artists there, and around this time, he opened a painting school in Rengetsu’s home.

Utagawa Kunisada 歌川国貞

1786–1864

Utagawa Kunisada, one of the most popular designers of his day and the most prolific print artist of all time, illustrated women with especially dramatic or tragic stories in his series of woodblock prints Kokon meifuden (Famous women of past and present).

Wada Gesshin 和田月心

1800–1870

Wada Gesshin was the head priest of the Jinkōin Temple in the northern part of Kyoto. He had been a professional painter known as Wada Gozan, but he took Shingon Buddhist orders with his sons following his wife’s death. The artist and nun Ōtagaki Rengetsu (太田垣蓮月 1791–1875) moved to the temple when she was seventy-five and produced many collaborative works with Gesshin until his death in 1870. Generally, Gesshin executed the painting, and Rengetsu provided a poem in her calligraphic hand.

Yamamoto Shōtō 山本緗桃

1757–1831

While there is no surviving record of where Yamamoto Shōtō trained or with whom, nineteenth-century sources record that she painted flowers, animals, and the Four Gentlemen (plum, bamboo, chrysanthemum, and orchid). Shōtō was married to Confucian scholar Yamamoto Hokuzan (山本北山 1752–1812). Her granddaughter, Yamamoto Sui’on, became a celebrated painter.

Yamazaki Ryūjo 山崎龍女

Active early 1700s

Yamazaki Ryūjo is best known for her colorful paintings of beautiful women, though she was also adept at Zen ink painting.

Yanagawa (Chō) Kōran 柳川(張)紅蘭

1804–1879

Yanagawa (Chō) Kōran was a celebrated poet and painter in Kyoto’s literati circles. She lived a bohemian lifestyle with her husband, the artist Yanagawa Seigan (梁川星巌 1789–1858). She was listed in the 1830 Heian jinbutsushi (Who’s who of Kyoto) as a literati artist. A collection of her poems was published in 1841, and one of her bamboo paintings was featured in the 1837 woodblock-printed book Hyaku meika gafu (Paintings and calligraphy by one hundred artists).

Kōran was an ardent imperial loyalist and was even imprisoned for several months. Nevertheless, she stayed in Kyoto, continuing her artistic activities and opening a school teaching Chinese poetry to girls. She died in 1878, having lived to see Japan enter the modern era.

Yuri of Gion 祇園の百合

1694–1764

Yuri, one of the Three Women of Gion, was a prolific poet and owner of the Matsuya, a teahouse in Kyoto known for its literary clientele. In the first half of the eighteenth century, Yuri took over ownership of the teahouse run by her adopted mother, Kaji (祇園梶子 1600s–1700s). She was a prolific poet and a student of the courtier Reizei Tamemura (冷泉為村 1712–1774). After her death, the scholar and famed calligrapher Rai San’yō (頼山陽 1780–1832) wrote a biography of her, calling her “a model of womanhood.”¹⁹ In 1727, a book containing 159 of her poems was published under the title Sayuriba (Leaves from a small lily). She raised her daughter, Machi, as the third generation of Matsuya poets. Machi eventually gained the name Gyokuran (徳山(池)玉瀾 1727–1784) and became one of the most important Japanese women artists of all time.

---

1. Patricia Fister, Japanese Women Artists, 1600–1900 (Lawrence, KS: Spencer Museum of Art/Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1988), 102. ↩︎

2. Patricia Fister, Kinsei no josei gakatachi: Bijutsu to jendaa [Japanese women artists of the Kinsei era] (Kyoto: Shibunkaku Shuppan, 1994), 152. ↩︎

3. Stephen Addiss, “The Three Women of Gion,” in Flowering in the Shadows: Women in the History of Chinese and Japanese Painting, ed. Marsha Weidner (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1990), 241–63. ↩︎

4. Fister, Kinsei no josei gakatachi, 72. ↩︎

5. Fister, Kinsei no josei gakatachi, 72. ↩︎

6. Katō Tōkurō, Genshoku tōki daijiten [Color encyclopedia of ceramics] (Kyoto: Tankōsha, 1972), 1020. ↩︎

7. Fister, Japanese Women Artists, 180.  ↩︎

8. Fister, Japanese Women Artists, 40.  ↩︎

9. Fister, Japanese Women Artists, 166 and 181n26. ↩︎

10. Stephen Addiss, Haiga: Takebe Sōchō and the Haiku-Painting Tradition (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1995), 14. ↩︎

11. Fister, Japanese Women Artists, 71.  ↩︎

12. Martha Jane McClintock, “Okuhara Seiko (1837–1913): The Life and Arts of a Meiji Period Literati Artist” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1991), 46. ↩︎

13. Fister, Kinsei no josei gakatachi, 32. ↩︎

14. Yutaka Chiba, “Kōko shiryō to shite no Rengetsu-yaki,” The Annual Report of the Center for Archaeological Operations 2001 (2006): 322. ↩︎

15. John Stevens, Lotus Moon: The Poetry of Rengetsu (Buffalo, NY: White Pine Press, 2005), 121. ↩︎

16. Melanie Eastburn, Lucie Folan, Robyn Maxwell, et al. Black Robe, White Mist: Art of the Japanese Buddhist Nun Rengetsu (Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 2008), 12.  ↩︎

17. Mori Senzō, Kinsei jinmeiroku shūsei, vol. 3, 249, quoted in Fister, Japanese Women Artists, 1600–1900, 143. ↩︎

18. Kyoko Kinoshita, “The Life and Arts of Tokuyama Gyokuran,” in Ike Taiga and Tokuyama Gyokuran: Japanese Masters of the Brush, eds. Felice Fischer and Kyoko Kinoshita (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art in association with Yale University Press, 2007), 40.  ↩︎

19. Published in Burton Watson, Japanese Literature in Chinese, vol. 2 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975), 162–67. ↩︎