Background
Nantenbō was born in Karatsu, Saga, Japan, on April 3, 1839, as the son of a samurai.
Nantenbō was born in Karatsu, Saga, Japan, on April 3, 1839, as the son of a samurai.
Nakahara Nantenbō lost his mother at the age of seven. He was sent to Yukoji, a Japanese monastery. He received instruction in Chinese classics in addition to Zen texts there. Between the ages of eighteen and thirty he trained at various centres, ultimately receiving an inka (certification of enlightenment).
Nantenbō spent many years as a Zen teacher. Eventually, he opened a Buddhist teaching center in Tokyo in 1886. In 1891 he became the abbot of the Zuigan-ji monastery in Matsushima. There Nantenbō began to produce his first paintings and calligraphy. In 1902, at the age of sixty-four, Nantenbō was asked by Myoshin-ji to take control of Kaisei-ji in Nishinomiya. A medium-size temple with a respectable tradition, Kaisei-ji was to become Nantenbō's home for the next twenty-three years until his death in 1925. He managed to mix monastic functions with wandering, teaching and writing books. In 1908, he was nominated the 586th Exalted Master of the main temple of Myoshin-ji.
He left behind numerous paintings and calligraphies, which he created mainly at the end of his life. His style is full of natural expression and minimization of form, and at the same time rooted in the tradition of his predecessors. Typical of Nakahara were compositions built on violently launched and suddenly breaking lines, often with a wet ink splashed by a brush on paper.
Staff
New Years
Zen Horse (Magic Gourd by Sohan Gempo)
Nanten's Staff
Enso with a Poem
Hachijūgo (85 year old) Nantembō Tōjū
Enso
Wall Gazing Daruma
Enso
Horse
Wall Gazing Daruma (Single Stroke Daruma) - detail
Nantenbo's Hand Print
I Don't Know
Daruma from Behind
Crows
Enso
Zen Staff
Sword of No-Sword
Giant Daruma
Snowman Daruma
Calligraphy
Staff
Single Line Calligraphy
Scarecrow
Nantenbo's Hand Print
Laska
Hearing Nothing, Seeing Nothing
Horse
Calligraphy
For Nakahara Nantenbō, his painting was a form of Zen practice, as it helped him achieve total concentration.
Quotations: "My writing is quite fast, as I am not concerned with the rules of calligraphy or whether it is good or bad. I write a page a minute, so it is nothing for me to write sixty sheets in an hour."