kazu wakita
Western style painter
Kosugi Houan (December 30, 1881 - April 16, 1964) was a Western-style painter, Japanese-style painter, poet, and essayist of the Meiji, Taisho, and Showa periods. His real name was Kunitaro, and his other names were Misei and Houan. His early paintings, which were selected for the Bunken (literary anthology), show a tendency toward oriental romanticism. The cartoons he wrote under the name Misei adopted the Art Nouveau style, which was popular at the time, and influenced the cartoons of Ippei Okamoto. The Yasuda Auditorium wall paintings, while still influenced by French painting, especially by Pierre Chavannes, also show a Japanese orientation, with characters from the Tenpyo style. After returning to France, he began to lean toward Oriental tastes, giving up oil painting and increasingly using ink painting. This shift from Western-style painting was supported by his recognition that "what is old to the East is new to the West and the world.