Kubo Shunman ( ja, 窪俊満; – 26 October 1820) was a Japanese artist and writer. He produced

ukiyo-e Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art which flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock prints and paintings Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surfac ...

prints and paintings, ''

gesaku is an alternative style, genre, or school of Japanese literature. In the simplest contemporary sense, any literary work of a playful, mocking, joking, silly or frivolous nature may be called gesaku. Unlike predecessors in the literary field, gesak ...

'' novels, and ''

kyōka ''Kyōka'' (, "wild" or "mad poetry") is a popular, parodic subgenre of the tanka form of Japanese poetry with a metre of 5-7-5-7-7. The form flourished during the Edo period (17th–18th centuries) and reached its zenith during the Tenmei era ...

'' and

haiku is a type of short form poetry originally from Japan. Traditional Japanese haiku consist of three phrases that contain a ''kireji'', or "cutting word", 17 '' on'' (phonetic units similar to syllables) in a 5, 7, 5 pattern, and a ''kigo'', or se ...

poetry.

Life and career

Shunman was born in about 1757 ( Hōreki 7 on the

Japanese calendar Japanese calendar types have included a range of official and unofficial systems. At present, Japan uses the Gregorian calendar together with year designations stating the year of the reign of the current Emperor. The written form starts with t ...

) with the surname of either Kubo () or Kubota () and the given name Yasubei ( or ). He was orphaned while young. He studied under , a poet,

kokugaku ''Kokugaku'' ( ja, 國學, label=Kyūjitai, ja, 国学, label=Shinjitai; literally "national study") was an academic movement, a school of Japanese philology and philosophy originating during the Tokugawa period. Kokugaku scholars worked to refo ...

scholar, and painter in the style of the Chinese

Shen Quan Shen Quan (; c. 1682–1760) was a Chinese painter during the Qing dynasty (1644–1912). His courtesy name was Nanpin (南蘋) and his sobriquet was Hengzhai (衡斎). His works became influential in Japanese Edo period art. Biography Shen ...

. He later also studied under the ukiyo-e artist

Kitao Shigemasa was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist from Edo. He was one of the leading printmakers of his day, but his works have been slightly obscure. He is noted for images of beautiful women (''bijinga''). He was taught by Shigenaga and has been referred to as ...

. Upon finishing his apprenticeship took the art name ''Shunman'' (first spelt , later ). Other art names he used include Shōsadō () and Sashōdō (), both of which use the character 左 ''sa'', meaning "left", as he was left-handed. Early in his career he published as a

novelist under the names Nandaka Shiran () and Kizandō (), as a ''

'' poet under the name Hitofushi Chitsue (), and as a

poet under the name (). He had a heightened sense of beauty and devoted himself to the pleasure-seeking world. Shunman's earliest works dates to 1774: a votive plaque copied from Nahiko. His works include some

prints, book illustrations, paintings, illustrated novels, and poetry. He was the most prolific producer of paintings in the

Kitao school Kitao (written: 北尾) is a Japanese surname. Notable people with the surname include: *Kanako Kitao (born 1982), Japanese-American synchronized swimmer *, Japanese sumo wrestler and professional wrestler *, Japanese shogi player *, Japanese anima ...

; more than 70 of his paintings survive. His best known prints come from the Tenmei (1781–1789) through the Kansei (1789–1801) eras, when Shunman tended toward boldly florid colours in his prints, and adhered to the ("red-hating") trend of avoiding reds and other flashy colours. His ''

bijin-ga is a generic term for pictures of beautiful women () in Japanese art, especially in woodblock printing of the ukiyo-e genre. Definition defines as a picture that simply "emphasizes the beauty of women", and the ''Shincho Encyclopedia of W ...

'' portraits of beauties were less in the stately style of his master Shigemasa than in that of the long, slender beauties of Torii Kiyonaga. Shunman was a member of the poets' clubs Bakuro-ren and Rokujuen, and became head of Bakuro-ren. He stopped making designing commercial prints in 1790 to focus on deluxe commissioned prints, and provided poetry for the prints of

Hokusai , known simply as Hokusai, was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist of the Edo period, active as a painter and printmaker. He is best known for the woodblock printing in Japan, woodblock print series ''Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji'', which includes the ...

, Utamaro, and

Eishi was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist. His last name was Hosoda (細田). His first name was Tokitomi (時富). His common name was Taminosuke (民之丞) and later Yasaburo (弥三郎). Pupil of Kano Eisen'in Michinobu (狩野栄川院典信). Born ...

. Kubo Shunman Women smoking under cherry blossoms.JPG Kubo Shunman Départ nocturne pour un concours de poésie, vers 1787.JPG Sumiyoshi odori Kubo Shunman.jpg Kubo Shunman - Toi.jpg Five cranes on a spit of sand. Surimono by Kubo Shunman (CBL J 2284).jpg, Five cranes on a spit of sand. Surimono, probably 1816. Chester Beatty Library

References

Works cited

* *

External links

* 18th-century Japanese artists 19th-century Japanese artists Ukiyo-e artists {{Japan-artist-stub