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Josetsu
( fl c. 1405–23). Japanese painter and Zen monk. Contemporary biographical information about Josetsu is limited to two references. A brief entry dated 1448 in the diary of the Onryoken, a subtemple of Shokokuji in Kyoto, mentions that in around 1416 Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimochi consulted with Josetsu about going to the island of Shikoku in search of stone for the carving of a stele in commemoration of Shokokuji’s founder, Muso Soseki. The entry makes no mention of Josetsu as a painter, but it suggests his acquaintance with Yoshimochi and an association with Shokokuji, which was an important centre in the development of ink painting in the Muromachi period (1333–1568) (see JAPAN, §VI, 4(iii)). A colophon by the otherwise unknown Kanjoso on Josetsu’s Sankyozu (‘The three doctrines’; Kyoto, Ryosokuin) states that the painting is by ‘[Jo]Setsu’ (clumsy-like), and that the painter was given this name by Zekkai Chushin (1336–1405) who took it from the Chinese phrase ‘the greatest skill is like clumsiness’, an aphorism from the Chinese Daoist classic, Daode jing.
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