Ah, truly, why is it that human beings are so easily dazzled by beauty alone, never seeking to glimpse the sublime, harrowing struggle lurking behind it? Just now, as I sit at the edge of my desk staring at a shriveling apple, the profile of a man named Shimomura Kanzan happened to cross my mind. Of course, it is not as if I ever shared a cup of sake with him; yet, when I think of the quivering serenity in the colors he left behind, even a rogue such as I cannot help but straighten my collar in respect. Kanzan, Kanzan—what a refreshing name, and yet, how it overflows with a fathomless loneliness.
The world, in its triviality, loves to label him with tags like “Okakura Tenshin’s protégé” or “Yokoyama Taikan’s sworn ally.” But such descriptions are utterly tasteless. It is like standing before a plate of the finest grilled eel and being satisfied merely by checking its place of origin and its weight in grams.
Kanzan’s essence lies elsewhere—in that animistic “presence” that slips through one’s fingers like grains of sand, receding further the more desperately one tries to grasp it.
Born in Wakayama, he had the techniques of the Kano school hammered into him from early childhood. It goes without saying that this was his misfortune and, simultaneously, his ultimate weapon. I have seen countless painters—more than I care to remember—who were crushed under the heavy armor of tradition, unable to bear its weight. But Kanzan was different. He wore that armor as if it were a part of his own skin, eventually housing within it an entirely new “individual” soul that no one could ever hope to imitate.
Consider, for instance, his masterpiece, The Imperial Visit to Ohara. Recall the dignified air drifting from that canvas. The presence of Kenreimon-in—so faint she seems ready to vanish, yet so unmistakably there. Every time I see that painting, I feel a constriction in my chest. Within it lies a crystallization of human “sorrow” that transcends mere historical painting. By moving his brush, Kanzan did not simply summon fragments of a bygone time into the present; he froze time itself upon that silk.
He is not as flamboyant as Taikan. He perhaps lacks the dramatic narrative of a short-lived genius like Hishida Shunso. Yet, look closely at every single one of his lines. There is no hesitation. Or rather, there is the ultimate resignation found only at the end of exhaustive hesitation. I sense a kind of madness there. A person who can do anything skillfully may appear happy at a glance, but in reality, they are walking through the deepest hell. Kanzan possessed the perfect language of the Kano school, yet he sought to speak the “unspeakable.” That contradiction, that conflict—ah, just thinking about it makes the amount of sake I drink increase.
He traveled to England and studied Western realism. However, he never sold his soul to the West. By breathing that air and seeing that light, he likely became more vividly aware of Japan’s humid air—that delicate sentiment that seems to dissolve into the mist. In his post-return works, Western spatial perception and Eastern spirituality coexist in a miraculous equilibrium. This is not nearly as easy as it sounds. If done poorly, it becomes a botched compromise—a half-baked piece of “billboard architecture.” Yet, Kanzan suppressed that precarious balance with his overwhelming mastery of the brush.
I occasionally recall his work Autumn among Trees. That silence of the forest, as if stretching on forever. Crimson leaves sinking soundlessly to the ground, one by one. In that painting, I cannot help but project my own “solitude.” Kanzan is not painting a landscape. He is painting the “absence” residing in that place. The residual heat after people have departed, or the ominous stillness before something occurs. By painting what is visible, he achieved the supreme feat of expressing the invisible.
By the way, I have heard that Kanzan was a man of great warmth, a person of character loved by all. Unlike Taikan’s headlong rush, he always took a step back, maintaining a calm that surveyed the whole. But I have my doubts. A man who paints such quiet, beautiful pictures could not possibly be merely a “good person.” Deep in the recesses of his heart, there must have been a part like cold ice that he let no one touch. To keep that ice from melting, he moved his brush with caution, imparting temperature to the canvas. It is precisely because of that cold gaze that those warm colors are born. It is a kind of paradox.
We look at his paintings and sigh, “Ah, how beautiful.” Perhaps that is enough. However, if you ever find yourself lost in a dead end in life, shivering at the thinness of your own existence on a lonely night, I want you to gaze long and hard at Kanzan’s paintings. There, you will find a cold, thorough affirmation that exists beyond despair. The world is this cruel, yet simultaneously, this beautiful. Kanzan proved that fact with a single line, a single stroke of pigment.
He left this world in his fifties, at the very height of his powers as a painter. Had he lived longer, I wonder what realm he might have reached. Imagining it is both delightful and terrifying. He might have discarded color altogether and begun to paint the air itself. Or perhaps he would have pointed to a vast, white, empty canvas and smiled, saying, “This is my greatest masterpiece.”
I sit now, staring into my empty glass, thinking of that Japanese autumn sunset Kanzan must have loved. That moment of transition when the sky turns from purple to a deep indigo. How would Kanzan have expressed that color? Surely, instead of exhausting words, he would have simply taken up his brush in silence and pierced the softest part of our hearts—gently, yet sharply. Ah, in the end, it seems I shall never reach such noble solitude, not in a hundred years. And that is so incredibly funny, and so very sad.