Shiubun had two brilliant pupils, Oguri Sotan and No-ami, the first a priest, a fine landscapist, and a wonderful painter of birds and flowers; the second a brilliant and versatile man of the world, courtier, poet, caligraphist, critic, and painter. In the last capacity he was especially renowned for his paintings of tigers. No-ami had a son Gei-ami and a grandson So-ami, both of whom, especially the latter, became famous landscapists of the Chinese school.

But the most famous of all the masters of the Chinese renaissance is Sesshiu, born 1420, died 1506, one of the greatest of all Japanese painters. As a youth he entered a Buddhist temple, but his thoughts were often far away from his religious duties. The story goes that once, as a punishment for some fault, he was tied to a pillar of the temple. With tears for ink, and using his toe as a brush, he sketched some rats on the floor, and as each was completed it sprang up, and began to gnaw through the rope that bound him. On the approach of the chief priest they scampered away; but the good monk was so impressed by the miracle that the youthful artist was henceforth allowed to follow his own bent.

At the age of forty Sesshiu, satisfied that he had learned all he could from the artists of his native country, went to China to study under the masters there, but to his surprise and discouragement he found none there who could teach him more than he already knew. Then said he: “Nature shall be my teacher; I shall go to the woods, the mountains, and the streams and learn from them.” So for some time he travelled in China painting and studying nature. His fame soon spread through the land, and the Chinese artists, frankly acknowledging him as their master, came to him for instruction. By the Emperor himself he was commissioned to paint a series of panels on the walls of the palace at Pekin, and on one of these, to mark his Japanese origin, the artist has placed a view of Fujisan.

It is by his landscapes that Sesshiu is best known, and never was the grandeur and the dignity of nature more fully expressed; but his figure subjects, notably the magnificent painting of Jurojin, the god of longevity, reproduced in the Kokkwa, and, in the British Museum collection, a wonderful study of Hotei, the god of contentment, frolicking with some children, must be seen before his full scope and great power can be realised. For he was in every sense a great painter; in each department his work is marked by lofty conception, great breadth of treatment, and an absolute certainty and ease of execution. His brushwork is very distinctive, and even by the novice may be recognised at a glance. Strong and vigorous, but angular and jagged like forked lightning, it often seems rude and clumsy when examined closely, but it never so asserts itself when we step back and look at the picture, but expresses exactly the effect intended. The British Museum possesses several very fine specimens of Sesshiu’s work. Even of the most famous of his pupils—Shiugetsu, Sesson, and Keishoki—space will not permit us to deal. Mention must be made, however, of a makimono by Sesson. It consists of eight views in monochrome roughly dashed off. Nothing could be more sketchy than the treatment or yet more vigorous. It is a veritable tour de force of caligraphic impressionism.

A secondary result of the Chinese renaissance was the foundation of the Kano school, which, based on the broad, caligraphic methods of the Chinese masters, gradually adapted them to their own use, evolving a freer and looser style of handling distinctly Japanese. The founder of the school was Kano Masanobu. When the artist Oguri Sotan died, in 1469, he was engaged in the decoration of the walls of the temple of Kinkakuji at Kioto, and, on Sesshiu’s recommendation, Masanobu, then only known as an amateur, was engaged to finish the work.