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Biography

Takeuchi Keishū 武内桂舟 (1861-1943)

Sources: Oberlin College website http://www.oberlin.edu/staff/fzwegat/TakeuBio.html; Minato City website http://www.lib.city.minato.tokyo.jp/yukari/e/man-detail.cgi?id=58; Guide to Modern Japanese Woodblock Prints: 1900 – 1975, Helen Merritt and Nanako Yamada, University of Hawaii Press, 1992, p. 147; The World of the Meiji Print: Impressions of a New Civilization, Julia Meech-Pekarik, Weatherhill, 1986, p. 219-220; Woodblock Kuchi-e Prints: Reflections of Meiji Culture, Helen Merritt and Nanako Yamada, University of Hawaii Press, 2000, p. 216-217.

photo c. 1887

Given name: Takeuchi Ginpei.  Born in the Akasaka district in Edo, he was the second son of a retainer of the Kishū daimyo.  The name Keishū was given to him by Keika-en Keika, a haiku poet and friend of his father.  He received no formal education.  He is primarily known as an illustrator.

Keishū was adopted into the family of Kanō Eitoku (1814-1891), who was head of the prestigious Nakabashi Kanō lineage.  But, because of the chaos in the country, there was no work for Kanō¹ painters so Keishū worked as a porcelain painter while studying Kanō.  After the suicide of his elder brother in 1879 or 1880, he returned to his father's house and abandoned the Kanō style.  After a disagreement about quality, Keishū switched from porcelain painting to making hanshita (drawing the black line images to be used for the keyblocks for woodblock prints.) 

At some point he studied drawing under Karino Masanobu and Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839-1892). 

It is not known when Keishū began illustration.  According to Keishū, his early years as a hanshita artist paid little and he was often hard-pressed for basic necessities.  When his son mentioned a desire to become a painter, Keishū responded, "If you are able to live on air and water, you may become an artist."

Photo, Friends of the Inkstone c. 1887 Front row from the left: Sazanami Iwaya, Shian Ishibashi,Kōyō Ozaki Back row from the left: Keishū Takeuchi, Bizan Kawakami, Suiin Emi http://shisly.cocolog-nifty.com/blog/2009/10/post-0048.html

In 1887, he joined the writing society Ken'yūsha (Friends of the Inkstone - a literary coterie founded in 1885 by a group of Tokyo University students) and designed kuchi-e (woodblock-printed frontispiece illustrations produced for publication in Japanese novels and literary magazines) and sashi-e (illustrations in books, magazines, and newspapers) for the novels of many of its members including its leader Ozaki Kōyō (1868-1903). He became the art editor for the Bungei Kurabu literary magazine and contributed some sixty-five kuchi-e, several of which are part of this collection. Takeuchi was such a good friend of Ozaki Kōyō that he drew the illustrations for Ozaki’s outstanding work, Konjiki Yasha (The Gold Demon), and he frequented the exclusive restaurant Koyokan (The Maple Club) in Shiba Park with the inner group members of Kenyūsha, Sazanami Iwaya (1870-1933), Shian Ishihashi, Bizan Kawakami (1869-1908), and Ozaki Kōyō, who claimed that Koyokan

was the best place to observe women. The progressive atmosphere of Koyokan, which was built in 1881 by the first president of the Yomiuri shimbun newspaper, Takashi Koyasu (1836-1898), perfectly matched the ethos of a group of young writers and artists, the Kenyūsha.


Keishū's produced woodblocks through the Russo-Japanese War.  In his later years he devoted himself to making and collecting dolls.  In 1937 he was honored by the mother of Emperor Shōwa who requested that he paint a picture of court dolls for her.

¹ Source: The British Museum website http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/article_index/j/japanese_painting_kan%C5%8D_school.aspx The Kanō school of painters were professional artists patronized by the shogunate from the late Muromachi period (1333-1568). The school was founded by Kanō Masanobu (1434-1530) who trained in ink painting of the Chinese Southern Song and Yuan dynasties at Shōkokuji Temple in Kyoto. Originally this ink painting style had been practiced mainly by Zen painter-monks as a way to enlightenment, but the Kanō artists became dominant, through the patronage of the Ashikaga shoguns (1338-1573). They were strictly secular professionals who worked mainly for the shogunate as official painters of Kanga over the next 400 years.

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