was a part of the Japanese family of painters, the Kanō school. He was the middle son of school's head

Kanō Eitoku was a Japanese painter who lived during the Azuchi–Momoyama period of Japanese history and one of the most prominent patriarchs of the Kanō school of Japanese painting. Life and works Born in Kyoto, Eitoku was the grandson of Kanō Moton ...

, younger brother to the Kano school heir

Kanō Mitsunobu Kanō Mitsunobu (, 1565–1608) was a son of Kanō Eitoku and an influential artist of the Kanō school of Japanese painting. Biography Scholars disagree on the year of Mitsunobu's birth, placing it in either 1561 or 1565. The earliest record o ...

, older brother to

Kanō Takanobu Kanō Takanobu (, 1 December 1571 – 18 October 1618) was a Japanese painter of the Kanō school of painting during the Azuchi–Momoyama period (1573–). He was the father of Kanō Tan'yū, one of the most prominent painters of the sch ...

, and adopted brother to the famed Kanō school painter

Kanō Sanraku was a Japanese painter also known as Kimura Heizō (his birth name), Shūri, Mitsuyori, and Sanraku. Sanraku's works combine the forceful quality of Momoyama work with the tranquil depiction of nature, and they have a more refined use of color ...

. Naizen primarily worked with his fathers and brothers in the head Kanō workshop in Kyoto to restore many imperial buildings, Buddhist temples, and Shinto shrines that were destroyed during the

Kamakura period The is a period of Japanese history that marks the governance by the Kamakura shogunate, officially established in 1192 in Kamakura by the first '' shōgun'' Minamoto no Yoritomo after the conclusion of the Genpei War, which saw the struggle bet ...

and the

Genpei War The was a national civil war between the Taira and Minamoto clans during the late Heian period of Japan. It resulted in the downfall of the Taira and the establishment of the Kamakura shogunate under Minamoto no Yoritomo, who appointed hi ...

s. In 1610–15 Naizen moved to

Edo Edo ( ja, , , "bay-entrance" or "estuary"), also romanized as Jedo, Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of Tokyo. Edo, formerly a ''jōkamachi'' (castle town) centered on Edo Castle located in Musashi Province, became the ''de facto'' capital of ...

(modern-day Tokyo), the new administration capital, at the behest of the recently ascendent

Tokugawa shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate (, Japanese 徳川幕府 ''Tokugawa bakufu''), also known as the , was the military government of Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in ...

Tokugawa Ieyasu was the founder and first ''shōgun'' of the Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan, which ruled Japan from 1603 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. He was one of the three "Great Unifiers" of Japan, along with his former lord Oda Nobunaga and fel ...

. Stylistically Nazien is often overshadowed by his father and brothers; however he is particularly known for his ''

byōbu are Japanese folding screens made from several joined panels, bearing decorative painting and calligraphy, used to separate interiors and enclose private spaces, among other uses. History are thought to have originated in Han dynast ...

'' screen paintings of ''

Nanban Nanban may refer to: Japan * Nanban art, Japanese art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries influenced by contact with the Nanban * Nanban trade or the , was a period in the history of Japan from the arrival of Europeans in 1543 to t ...

'' ("Southern Barbarians", i.e. Europeans). Naizen acquired his name when officially entering the Kanō school; his personal name was Shigesato (). One of his more famous works, "Festivals of Toyokuni" (), was one of these such paintings, produced in 1605 for the seventh anniversary of the death of '' Kampaku''

Toyotomi Hideyoshi , otherwise known as and , was a Japanese samurai and '' daimyō'' ( feudal lord) of the late Sengoku period regarded as the second "Great Unifier" of Japan.Richard Holmes, The World Atlas of Warfare: Military Innovations that Changed the C ...

, whose

posthumous name A posthumous name is an honorary name given mostly to the notable dead in East Asian culture. It is predominantly practiced in East Asian countries such as China, Korea, Vietnam, Japan, and Thailand. Reflecting on the person's accomplishment ...

was Toyokuni Daimyōjin ().

References

* Nussbaum, Louis Frédéric and Käthe Roth. (2005). ''Japan Encyclopedia.'' Cambridge:

Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the reti ...

.
OCLC 48943301
* Lane, Richard. (1978). ''Images from the Floating World, The Japanese Print.'' Oxford: Oxford University Press.
OCLC 5246796
;Specific

External links

Kanō Naizen,

Kobe Kobe ( , ; officially , ) is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture Japan. With a population around 1.5 million, Kobe is Japan's seventh-largest city and the third-largest port city after Tokyo and Yokohama. It is located in Kansai region, w ...

City Museum
Bridge of dreams: the Mary Griggs Burke collection of Japanese art
a catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on this artist (see index) 1570 births 1616 deaths 16th-century Japanese people 17th-century Japanese people 16th-century Japanese artists 17th-century Japanese artists 16th-century Japanese painters 17th-century Japanese painters Kanō school {{Japan-artist-stub