Hasegawa Kyūzō

Who They Were

Hasegawa Kyūzō (長谷川久蔵, 1568 – 13 July 1593) was a Japanese painter of the Azuchi–Momoyama period, the turbulent decades when a succession of warlords unified the country. He was the eldest son and chosen heir of Hasegawa Tōhaku, one of the most celebrated painters of the age. Kyūzō died at twenty-five, before he could inherit that position or complete a career, but the handful of works attributed to him earned him a reputation that outlived him.

He was born in Noto Province, on the Sea of Japan coast of what is now Ishikawa Prefecture, far from the imperial capital of Kyoto. His mother was Myōjō (妙浄), Tōhaku's first wife, who died in 1579. Kyūzō's life belongs to the Muromachi period by the calendar of the era in which he was born — his birth fell in Eiroku 永禄 11, the eleventh year of that era name — though the art he made belongs to the Azuchi–Momoyama world that followed.

Life and Career

Kyūzō was born into a painter's household at a moment when the Hasegawa school was rising fast. His father Tōhaku had moved from Noto to Kyoto and was winning commissions from the men who were consolidating military power over Japan. The young Kyūzō grew up inside that workshop, learning the Hasegawa manner — ink painting of great economy and atmosphere, rooted in Chinese models but increasingly distinct from the rival Kanō school.

It is generally surmised that Kyūzō painted on the byōbu (屏風, folding screens) produced for Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the warlord who dominated Japan in the 1580s and 1590s, or for other high-ranking Toyotomi supporters. Screens of this kind were the prestige commissions of the day, made for castles and temples, and a painter's son working in his father's studio would have been set to work on them early.

Four works survive that are credited to Kyūzō. The Asahina Kusa Zuri Hiki Zu 朝比奈草摺曳図, held at Kiyomizu-dera in Kyoto and dated 1592, shows the warrior Asahina Yoshihide dragging a heavy piece of armour — a scene of legendary strength. It is designated an Important Cultural Property. The Sakura Zu 桜図, a cherry-tree painting at Chishaku-in (also called Shōun-ji) in Kyoto and dated to about 1592, forms part of the Sakura Kaede Zu, a set of cherry and maple paintings designated a National Treasure of Japan. The Ohara Gōkō-zu Byōbu 大原御幸図屏風, depicting the retired emperor's visit to the recluse Kenreimon-in at Ohara, is in the Tokyo National Museum. The Gion E-zu 祇園会図, showing the Gion Festival, is in the Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of Art.

Tōhaku intended Kyūzō to succeed him as head of the school. That plan ended on 13 July 1593, when Kyūzō died in his mid-twenties.

Why They Matter

Kyūzō matters for two reasons that pull in opposite directions. The first is the sheer quality of what little he left. The second is the question of what the Hasegawa school might have become had he lived.

The judgement that secured his reputation comes from Kanō Einō, a painter of the rival Kanō school, in the Honchō Gashi 本朝画史, a history of Japanese painting compiled in 1679. Einō wrote that the elegance of Kyūzō's work surpasses his father's, and that no one else in the Hasegawa school matched it. That a Kanō-school author — writing for the tradition that competed most directly with the Hasegawa — should rank the son above the father is a striking endorsement. Tōhaku was by then an established master whose pine-tree screens are among the most famous images in Japanese art. For a rival historian to place the twenty-five-year-old above him says something about how Kyūzō's surviving paintings were regarded.

His death also changed the shape of the school. With the intended heir gone, the Hasegawa line passed to others, and the school's fortunes after Tōhaku's own death in 1610 were not what they might have been. Kyūzō is thus a figure defined by both achievement and interruption: a painter whose four surviving works are enough to place him among the notable artists of his generation, and whose early death left the Hasegawa school without the leader his father had trained.

The Name in Japanese

The name is written 長谷川久蔵. It is read in kana as はせがわ きゅうぞう, and in roman letters as Hasegawa Kyūzō. The surname comes first, as is standard in Japanese.

長谷川 — はせがわ — Hasegawa (family name)

• 長 — read here as hase. This character normally means "long" or "chief," and is read naga or chō in most words. In this surname it takes an irregular reading.
• 谷 — read here as se. The character means "valley," usually read tani or koku. The se reading is peculiar to this name.
• 川 — read here as gawa. It means "river," normally read kawa; it shifts to gawa when it follows another element in a compound, a common voicing change in Japanese.

The surname is shared with Kyūzō's father Tōhaku and with the school of painting they founded. Its three characters — long, valley, river — are a place-name in origin.

久蔵 — きゅうぞう — Kyūzō (given name)

• 久 — read here as kyū. It means "long-lasting," "of long duration." The same character appears in the era name Eiroku 永禄, though written differently there; as a name element it carries the wish that the bearer live long.
• 蔵 — read here as zō. It means "storehouse," "warehouse," or "to store." It is a very common ending for male given names of this period, often written 蔵 or 三.

The given name is thus two characters meaning roughly "long-lasting storehouse" — a conventional auspicious name for a son, and a poignant one given that Kyūzō died at twenty-five. Note that 久蔵 is read Kyūzō, not Hisazō; the first character takes its Sino-Japanese reading kyū rather than its native Japanese reading hisa.

Legacy

Kyūzō's legacy rests on four paintings and one sentence of praise. The Sakura Zu at Chishaku-in, part of a National Treasure set, and the Asahina Kusa Zuri Hiki Zu at Kiyomizu-dera, an Important Cultural Property, keep his work in front of the public in Kyoto. The screens in Tokyo and Kanazawa extend that reach to the two cities most associated with the art of the period.

He is remembered above all as the son who might have surpassed the father. Kanō Einō's verdict in the Honchō Gashi of 1679 — that Kyūzō's elegance exceeded Tōhaku's and stood unmatched in the Hasegawa school — has followed his name ever since. For a painter who died before he could head the school he was born into, that is an unusual kind of fame: not the fame of a long career, but of a brief one that left later writers wondering what had been lost.