Takeuchi Seihō: Painter of Post-Meiji Japan

* Among others who have assisted in the preparation of this study, too numerous to mention, certain individuals have been exceptionally helpful. They include the sons of the artist, Takeuchi Itsu and Takeuchi Shirō the daughter of the artist, Takeuchi Sono, widow of Itō Tamejirō, and her son, Itō Hisashi; various members of the Chikujōkai, above all ōya Shunrei, Itō Sekika, and Miki Suizan; the Japanese historian of Momoyama and Tokugawa painting, Doi Tsugiyoshi, the Japanese historian who wrote the history of Japanese sculpture and painting translated by H. G. Henderson, Minamoto Toyomune, and the author's secretary, who aided in making translations, Ohno Miyeko. Japanese names as given in the present study follow the customary Japanese order; i.e., family name first, then the given name, without separation by a comma. In referring to an artist by a single name the usage of the Japanese art historian is followed and the given name employed, rather than the family name.

Abstract

AT YUGAWARA on the Tōkaidō the express train does not stop. Rumor has it, however, that when the great Seihō rode the express, going from his home in Kyōto or in Sagano to his third mansion in that resort town near Tōkyō, the train never failed to stop. If the story has any foundation, the motorman was like all Japanese at the height of the artist's career: they sought with every courtesy to honor Takeuchi Seihō.¹ Collectors coveted his works, paid their money in advance, then strove to get their orders filled by heaping him with gifts. They plied him, for example, with that prized gelatinous confection yōkan, until the Takeuchi family came to use it for fuel. A station-master in Yokohama, learning of Seihō's zest for a certain Chinese dish available only in that city, bought it for him regularly and sent it by special delivery. Prince Kuni-no-miya, visiting the artist's home in Sagano, bore him tribute with the planting of a pine tree in the garden. When the painter lay dying of pneumonia at Yugawara, with no oxygen tank at hand, the mayor sent the city's fire truck and ambulance in search of one.