A Kiri-wood tray decorated with a delicate landscape and poem by Tanaka Hakuin enclosed in the original signed wooden box dated the Autumn of Taisho 8 ((1919).It is 44 x 30 x 3.5 cm roughly 17-1/2 x 12 x 1-1/2 inches) and is in excellent condition.
Tanaka Hakuin (birth name Nakagawa Keizaburo, 1866-1934) was born in Suruga, Shizuoka prefecture in the last years of the Edo period and became a student of Tanomura Chokunyu in Kyoto, the cultural heartland of Japan, at the age of 17.This was a tumultuous period as Western ideas and Technology were flooding into Japan.He was the top pupil of Chokunyu, working in the style of both Chikuden and his mentor.At this time he used the name Tanomura Hakuin.In 1900 he married and moved to Hofu city in Yamaguchi prefecture taking his wifes family name Tanaka as his surname, and thereafter was known as Tanaka Hakuin. He established a school for painting where he worked for his remaining years.Work by him is held in the Mori Art Museum and Honolulu.
