Kawabata Ryushi

Ama-no-hashi-zu by Kawabata Ryûshi. National Theatre of Japan.

• Born: 1885
• Died: 1966
• Other Names: 川端昇太郎 (Kawabata Shoutarou)
• Japanese: 川端龍子 (Kawabata Ryuushi)

Kawabata Ryûshi was a Nihonga & yôga painter.

Originally from Wakayama City, his childhood name was Shôtarô. His family ran a shop selling textiles and kimono.

Taking the art-name Ryûshi, he began his artistic career as a yôga painter (painting in oils, in a Western style). He worked for a time providing images for the Kokumin shimbun newspaper and participated in the Hakubakai (White Horse Society) artist association. After traveling in Europe & the US around 1913-14, where he viewed some of the greatest Japanese art treasures in Western collections, Ryûshi turned to Nihonga (painting in traditional Japanese media). The following year (1915), he joined a number of other artists in forming the Sangokai (Coral Group). He also became active for a time in the Nihon Bijutsuin (Japan Arts Institute), the preeminent Nihonga group in Japan, but left in 1926 and co-founded a new Nihonga painters' collective called Seiryûsha.

In 1934, he traveled to Japanese-controlled Micronesia, writing about his experiences and painting South Seas scenes in Palau and Yap.

Ryûshi was awarded the Order of Culture in 1959.

Ryûshi died in 1966 at the age of 81.

References

• Berry, Paul and Michiyo Morioka. Literati Modern. Honolulu Academy of Arts, 2008. pp156, 179, 289.
• "Kawabata Ryûshi." Bijutsu jinmei jiten 美術人名辞典. Shibunkaku.