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Shugetsu Tokan (Painter-monk from the mid- to late Muromachi period)

Shugetsu Tokan (Painter-monk from the mid- to late Muromachi period)

        
Regular price ¥800,000 JPY
Regular price Sale price ¥800,000 JPY
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Product number: K0208
Title: Monjusri Eagle Triptych
Artist: Shugetsu Tokan (Painter-monk from the mid- to late Muromachi period)
Media: Silk, colored, scroll binding
Size: (each) 102 x 41cm / (each) shaft mounting 189 x 57cm
Remarks: Ivory Jikusaki

Akizuki Tōkan was a Zen monk-painter active in the late Muromachi period. Known as one of the few direct disciples of Sesshū Tōyō, he occupies an important place as a “transmitter” who helped establish Sesshū’s style in Satsuma and the wider Kyushu region. Born in Satsuma, Tōkan is said to have originally served the Shimazu clan as a warrior before taking Buddhist vows. He studied painting under Sesshū at Ungai-an in Yamaguchi, and the tradition that he received Sesshū’s self-portrait at the age of seventy-one in 1490 has long been cited as symbolic proof of the formal transmission of the master’s methods. Returning to his homeland in 1492, he became associated with Fukushō-ji in Satsuma. He is also believed to have traveled to Ming China, and his View of West Lake (1496), painted at the Huitongguan in Beijing (Important Cultural Property; Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of Art), is especially significant as an emblematic work reflecting both his artistic practice and his transregional—indeed international—movements.
Tōkan is said to have produced a considerable number of bird-and-flower paintings as well. While grounded in brushwork inherited from Sesshū, he encouraged its regional development, and through the training of disciples contributed to the formation of a Satsuma painting milieu. In this light, Akizuki Tōkan can be valued not merely as “Sesshū’s pupil,” but as a pivotal figure who transplanted a central pictorial language to the periphery and bridged it forward to the next generation.

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