“Pair of Cranes”

Kakutei

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Artist Name
Kakutei
Title
“Pair of Cranes”
Dimensions
painting：113.0×39.9㎝
full length：193.0×50.0㎝
Medium
Ink on Silk
Year
1779～1782
Description
This work depicts cranes, a subject for which Kakutei was particularly renowned. Two cranes are shown standing upon an earthen bank. The background is lightly brushed with pale ink; faint contour lines define the forms, while the interior of the bodies is left unpainted in white, allowing the birds to emerge through subtle contrast. Such simplified brushwork, as seen in this painting, is characteristic of Kakutei’s later years. On the left side of the composition, bamboo is arranged, rising upward toward the upper center of the picture plane, thereby creating a sense of spatial depth.

Kakutei was the art name of Kaigan Jōkō (1722–1786), a mid-Edo period Ōbaku Zen monk. His religious names included Genpō and Etatsu, later Kaigan; his Dharma names were Jōyō, Jōkō, and Jōhaku. Although he is best known by the painting name Kakutei, he also used such studio names as Nyōze Dōjin, Nyōze Shujin, Beijuō, Hakuyō Sanjin, Nansōō, Bokuō, and Gojian.

He was the Dharma heir of Gakusō, the fourth abbot of Shōfuku-ji in Nagasaki. Initially a monk at that temple, he left the priesthood at the age of twenty-five following his master’s death and became a pupil of Yūhi (Xiong Fei), a direct disciple of Shen Nanpin. There he studied richly colored, naturalistic bird-and-flower painting and established his own distinctive style. He later returned to the Ōbaku order and became the sixth abbot of Shiun-in, one of the thirteen rotating subtemples (rinryū jūsan’in) of Manpuku-ji, where he spent fifteen years. Although invited to serve as abbot of Shōfuku-ji, he declined, and subsequently moved to Osaka and then to Edo. From childhood he had loved painting, and he excelled particularly in bird-and-flower subjects, orchids, and ink paintings of bamboo.

He maintained close friendships with leading cultural figures such as Kimura Kenkadō, Yanagisawa Ki’en, Ike Taiga, and the Ōbaku monks Taihō Shōkun and Monchū Jōfuku. By disseminating the style of Shen Nanpin throughout the Kyoto–Osaka region, he played an important role in fostering the rise of realism in the painting circles of the late Edo period.

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