Hoan Kosugi1881~1964 小杉放庵

Kosugi Hoan (1881-1964) was a Japanese painter and writer who worked across Western-style painting, Nihonga, tanka poetry, and essays during the Meiji, Taisho, and Showa eras. Born on December 30, 1881 in Nikko, Tochigi Prefecture, his given name was Kunitaro, and during his career he used the art names Misei, Hoan (放庵), and later Hoan (放菴). In 1900 he moved to Tokyo to study under Koyama Shotaro, joined the Pacific Painting Society in 1902, and served as a war correspondent during the Russo-Japanese War. He studied in France in 1913, and after seeing Ike no Taiga’s “Juben-zu” he turned increasingly toward Nihonga and ink painting. In 1922 he co-founded the Shun’yokai with Morita Tsunetomo and others, and in his later years pursued an Eastern aesthetic he summarized as “what is old to the East is new to the West.”