Studio: international art (59.1913)

Studio- Talk

subject, carp and horses having been his favourite
motives, though he also had talent for figures.
Chinsetsu is his other gwago or nom deplume. It
is made up of two characters : chin meaning
pillow; setsu denoting snow. This was given to
him by his master Sugitani Sessho, and in connection
with it there is an interesting story. Shokoku was
extremely poor and lived in a room of a dilapidated
hut. When he awoke one morning he found him-
self covered with snow that had been blown in
during the night through the cracks in the walls
and roof. When he spoke of this to his teacher in
course of a conversation that day a new gwago,
Chinsetsu (Pillow-snow), was given to him.

The devotion of Shokoku to his master was
beautiful beyond words. Until his death he used
to say that there was not a single day but that he
thought of his teacher, who predeceased him by
some eighteen years. He built a monument to
his memory at Mukojima, Tokyo. Shokoku, like
his teacher, was very fond of travelling, especially
climbing mountains. There is hardly any mountain
of note in Japan which he did not climb. He was
very observant, and tried to draw everything he saw
or heard. Because he was fond of watching the
flames he used to assist the maid in the kitchen.
He was admired by many for his beautiful simplicity
of mind and beloved for his kind sympathetic heart.
In this also he was like his master, who, when he
died in 1895, divided everything he possessed
among all his friends and acquaintances, even the
milkman and the greengrocer who dealt with him
not being forgotten, the persons remembered in his
will numbering no less than 180. Shokoku never
grumbled in poverty, being always conscientious in
his work, regardless of the remuneration. He
painted a large number of pictures during our war
against Russia, and gave the money he got for them
to the war fund. He was fifty-five years of age when
he died, and left a son, Setsuho, an artist of con-
siderable merit.

The drawings of Kodama Kwatei, one of the
most popular artists in the Nanga style of modern
times, whose recent death was deeply mourned, are
now much spoken of and admired. He was born
seventy-three years ago at Shibu-mura, a small
village in the province of Shinano. When a mere
boy, a great future was prophesied for him by
Sakuma Zozan. He studied Chinese classics under
Onozawa Sensai, and took lessons in drawing from
Sakuma Unso, a monjin of Chinzan. Later he
studied the Zen with Adegami Baisen, head priest
33°

of the Sairakuji temple at Odawara, whither Kwatei
subsequently went, teaching Chinese classics to the
young priests there while he himself pursued his
study of Zen. At the age of twenty-six Kwatei left
his home with a paint-brush to roam all over the
country for the perfection of his art. During his
wanderings he became a monjin of Hine Taizan in
Kyoto, and on his second visit to that city some
years afterwards he found his teacher already dead.
It was then that he became for a short time a pupil
of Tanomura Chokunu. At the age of forty, after
fourteen years’ wanderings, he returned to his
native village, never to leave it again until his
seventy-third year, when death overtook him at
Odawara. His friends often tried to persuade him
to come to Tokyo, where he might make a name
for himself. But he was quite indifferent to fame

“a river scene” by nemoto shokoku