( fl Edo [now Tokyo], 1806–21). Print designer and book illustrator. He studied with Tsutsumi Torin III (c. 1743–1820) and later with (3) Katsukawa Shun’ei. He changed his name to Katsukawa Shunsen in 1806. His first work is Katakiuchi gen gorofuna, illustrating the first gokan (‘bound together volume’; historical novel) by Tozaian Nanboku. The introduction states that this was ‘the first work of Kojimachi Shunsen’. Subsequently, he produced many illustrations for gokan and also experimented with nishikie (‘brocade prints’; full-colour prints), which include Enoshima and Tsukiji monzeki (‘Tsukiji priest prince’). In 1820 he succeeded Katsukawa Shunko I, becoming Shunko II. The following year he signed the illustrations for a gokan, Aware nari onna karukaya, ‘Shunsen aratame Katsukawa Shunko’ (‘Change of Shunsen to Katsukawa Shunko’). At around the same time he designed a series of landscape prints of famous places in Edo, which used Western principles of vanishing perspective and colour shading. He illustrated Awase kagami onna shunkan (1819–22), a gokan written by his wife under the pseudonym Gekkotei Shoju, and the gokan Onna jirai nari and Onna nadaemon (both 1821). In the late 1820s he decorated ceramics, distancing himself from the production of ukiyoe prints.

Part of the Katsukawa family

• Katsukawa Shunsen
  • groups and movements
    • Katsukawa: (2) Katsukawa Shunko
  • teachers
    • Katsukawa
    • Katsukawa: (3) Katsukawa Shun’ei
  • works
    • Japan, §IX, 3(iii)(b): Prints, c 1760–c 1780
    • Japan, §IX, 3(iii)(d): Prints and books: Edo period: prints and after: Historical development: c. 1800–c. 1820