(b Edo [now Tokyo], 1757; d Edo, 1820). Japanese print designer, painter, poet, writer and lacquer and shell-inlay artist. Orphaned at an early age, he was raised by an uncle. He studied honga (‘true or book pictures’) with the Nanga (literati painting) artist Tabete Ryotai (1719–74) and ukiyoe (‘pictures of the floating world’) with KITAO SHIGEMASA. Early examples of Shunman’s work include the illustrations for the sharebon (‘witty book’; comic novel) Tama kiku toroben (1780) and the gafu (‘picture album’) Gakoku (1783) in the honga style. He was a prolific designer of bijinga (‘pictures of beautiful women’) and fuzokuga (‘pictures of customs and manners’), which show the influence, not of his teacher, Shigemasa, but of Torii Kiyonaga (see TORII, (8)), one of the leading ukiyoe artists of the day. Shunman introduced the benigirai (‘red-hating’; using no red (pink) pigment) technique, which he employed in his Mutamagawa (‘Six crystal rivers’; see fig.). In around 1790 he seems to have abandoned single-sheet prints to concentrate on privately commissioned kyoka (‘crazy verse’) surimono (‘printed objects’; de luxe full-colour prints), of which he was an early leading practitioner. Shunman was a man of diverse talents: he excelled at kyoka, which he studied with the poet Rokujuen [Ishikawa Masamochi] (1753–1830), wrote gesaku (vernacular literature) and painted nikuhitsuga (‘original paintings’; polychrome paintings; see JAPAN, §VI, 4(iv)(b)).

• Kubo Shunman
  • pupils
    • Katsukawa: (4) Katsukawa Shuncho
  • teachers
    • Kitao Shigemasa
  • works
    • Japan, §IX, 3(iii)(c): Prints, c 1780–c 1800
    • Japan, §IX, 3(iii)(d): Prints and books: Edo period: prints and after: Historical development: c. 1800–c. 1820