Studio: international art (58.1913)

Studio- Talk

"wild ducks" by masuzu shunnan

The Tatsumi Gwa-kai is a very prosperous society,
with a membership of some twelve hundred,
embracing practically all the well-known Japanese
artists of the present day.

Last year this society lost one of its most
prominent members by the death of Takahashi
Koko who was only thirty-eight, according to the
Japanese way of counting age. He was the son
of an artist named Urata Setsuo, and learnt how
to wield paint brushes from his childhood. First
he became a monjin, or pupil, of Setcho of the
Sesshu school, and then practised nangwa under
Inuzuka Shokin. We are told that one of the
great yearnings of his younger days was to paint
a really beautiful woman. Great was his joy,
therefore, when he met at Yamaga, in Kiushu,
one Miss Oko Takahashi, a charming actress from
Tokyo. He persuaded her to sit as his model,

and the result of his efforts with the brush was a
delight to him, but greater was the delight of the
actress, who finally prevailed upon him to come to
Tokyo and become adopted in her family. Up to
that time his name was Urata Kumaki (the family
name coming first according to the Japanese
custom) and Tenroku was his nom de plume, or
gago, as it is called in Japanese. It was after he
became a monjin of Matsumoto Fuko, who is still
living, that he received a new gago, Koko, which
he kept until his death.

Koko was at his best in historical subjects,
especially those of the Fujiwara period (987-1159),
but he also did some good kwacho (flowers-and
birds), and landscapes, and won wide recognition
when he exhibited The Mongolian Invasion at the
Tokyo Exhibition in 1906, where he was awarded a
silver medal for it. However, he made his name at

"landscape" by komura suiun

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