Background
Nankai Gion was born in 1677 in Kii (Wakayama Prefecture). He was also called Yoichiro.
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hanging scroll
Window onto Bamboo on a Rainy Day
Nankai Gion
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also known as
Yoichiro
Education
He he studied under Jun-an Kinoshita in Edo.
Career
He served the Lord of Wakayama and took charge of cultural affairs of his clan. Gion was also noted as a good writer of Chinese poems and as a painter. He was one of the three master writers of his time, the other two having been Hakuseki Arai and Zeigan Yanada. His landscapes are said to have similarities with those of Tao Po-hu, the noted Chinese artist.
At age twenty-four, Gion Nankai was fired from his position as a Confucian scholar, with his overseers citing Nankai's 'profligate ways' as the cause. Although he was reinstated only a decade later, his years spent as an exiled scholar, along with the fact that he was an accomplished poet and skilled painter, contributed to his renown as a pioneer of the Japanese literati movement.
