Rendered with flowing, rhythmic brushwork, Kodōjin’s mountains seem to breathe and shift, their forms defined not by solidity but by the movement of mist and spirit. Pale washes of vermilion and gray enliven the ridges and trees, evoking autumn foliage glowing through the haze. The composition ascends in a sinuous rhythm—peaks rising through cloud, dissolving into emptiness—expressing the continuous transformation of nature and mind. At the upper right, Kodōjin inscribes a Daoist-inspired verse, reflecting his lifelong meditation on transcendence and inner cultivation.
The text reads:
The True Man holds no rank;
He delights in the Way and seeks no fame.
Beneath the bright sun, he wanders freely,
Content within the vastness of Heaven and Earth.
Clothed in the pure breath of mist and cloud,
His spirit and bones become weightless.
He who can harmonize with transformation
May awaken to the unborn realm.
From the Dragon’s Cavern he emerges,
And at times rides the clouds once more.
This poem, inscribed by Fukuda Kodōjin under his studio name Seisho fuses Daoist imagery with the Bunjin ideal of transcendence through nature. The “True Man” is the enlightened recluse of Zhuangzi — a figure beyond worldly station or fame, whose life flows with the natural transformations of Heaven and Earth. Kodōjin’s brush mirrors this philosophy: the ethereal mountains and curling clouds dissolve into abstraction, their gentle washes of vermilion and gray suggesting a world between form and emptiness. The poem’s final image of a divine dragon emerging from its cave and roaming the clouds evokes the painter’s own act of creation: the brush as dragon, the ink as clouds. Ink and light color on paper in golden Champaigne silk patterned with flowering vines with white piping featuring turned wood rollers enclosed in the original signed wooden box titled Shukei Sansui Zu. The scroll is 42 x 187 cm 17 x 73-1/2 inches) and is in excellent condition.
Fukuda Kodojin (1865-1944) was an eccentric self-taught artist, his status as a poet, calligrapher and literati artist has reached legendary status. Born at a time of great change (4 years before the final fall of the Edo Government), he lived through the westernization of Meiji, Taisho Democracy, the rise of Imperialism and final defeat of the Showa eras. He was part of a small group of artists existing outside conventional circles in pre-war Japan. He moved to a village outside of Kyoto in 1901, where he supported himself and his family by privately tutoring those who wished to learn Chinese-style poetry. Kodojin was simply a scholar. His poetry, painting, and calligraphy all stem from a life-long cultivation of the mind. He was said to have taken the time just before his death to destroy the large portion of his own remaining work, leaving only that which must have met some personal criteria. Kodōjin’s paintings and calligraphy survive mainly in private collections, but significant works can be found in the collections of the British Museum, Freer Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian Institute, Honolulu Museum of Art, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Kumamoto Prefectural Museum of Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Museo Kaluz, New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, Portland Art Museum, Seattle Art Museum, St. Louis Art Museum, Tanabe City Museum of Art and Wakayama Prefectural Museum of Art among others including such well known Private collections as the Cowles Collection, Hakutakuan Collection, Manyoan Collection and Welch Collection. Twenty five paintings by the artist formed a private exhibition (from the Gitter-Yelen collection) at the New Orleans Museum of Art in 2000. In recent years, exhibitions such as The Last Master of the Literati Tradition: Fukuda Kodōjin (Minneapolis Institute of Art, 2023) have brought renewed attention to his achievement. For more on his life see the book Old Taoist, or Unexplored Avenues of Japanese Painting.
