Kokan Shiba

Background

Kokan Shiba was born in 1747 in Edo (now Tokyo), Japan.

Education

Kōkan started his artistic career at the age of 15 at the Kanō school in Edo, but left the school six years later. He was influencend then by Suzuki Harunobu and Sō Shiseki. In 1773 he met Hiraga Gennai. Kōkan mastered a number of very different styles, and was also a great innovator, exploring new methods and styles on his own.

Career

He became the first Japanese artist, in 1783, to use copperplate engraving, a print, called View on Mimeguri. Following Harunobu's death in 1770, Kōkan placed Harunobu's signature on a number of his own prints, which were supposedly accepted as true works of Harunobu at the time.

Like many other Edo period artists, Kōkan used a great variety of other names at various points in his career, though "Shiba Kōkan", "Suzuki Harushige", and close variations on those appear far more often. Variations include Shiba Shun and Suzuki Shun, while his other names include A Fugen-dōjin, Kungaku, Rantei, and as a writer Shumparō.

Kōkan lived in Edo, was a student of rangaku (Dutch studies) in addition to his pursuits as an artist, and interested in astronomy in particular. He wrote and illustrated a book on Copernicus' theories, entitled Kopperu temmon zukai, Illustrated Explanation of Copernicus' Astronomy). He met Hendrik Caspar Romberg, the Dutch embassy visiting the Shogun at Edo, but visited Nagasaki only once, in 1788.

Kokan left many precise copperplate engravings of celestial and terrestial globes and many oil paintings.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Rakan

  • A meeting of Japan, China, and the West

  • Moon above Shinagawa, signed Harushige

  • Woman, with faked Harunobu signature

  • Pair of scrolls in style of Sō Shiseki

  • View on Mimeguri

  • Seven-miles beach with Enoshima and Fuji

  • Two oil paintings

References

• Shiba Kōkan: Shōgai to gagyō (Japanese Edition)
  1995
• Japan Encyclopedia (Harvard University Press Reference Library) by Louis FrEdEric (2002-05-31)
  2002