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Shugetsu Tokan (Painter-monk from the mid- to late Muromachi period) [K0208]

Shugetsu Tokan (Painter-monk from the mid- to late Muromachi period) [K0208]

Regular price ¥800,000 JPY
Regular price Sale price ¥800,000 JPY
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This item contains IVORY
IIvory is prohibited from being taken outside Japan under CITES and related regulations. Depending on the item, international shipping may be possible after the ivory components have been removed. Please contact us before purchasing.

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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