Renowned for its design-oriented style, the Rimpa school has left an enduring mark on the history of Japanese painting. The school is often described as having unfolded across time through a lineage of painters who admired and inherited their predecessors’ artistic styles—from Tawaraya Sōtatsu (dates unknown), to Ogata Kōrin (1658–1716), and later to Sakai Hōitsu (1761–1829). However, the formation of the art of Rimpa was not the achievement of these three figures alone.

Ogata Kōrin, the painter of the National Treasure Irises Screens, had a number of followers connected to him both directly and indirectly. Among them, Watanabe Shikō, who supported his master’s production with exceptional skill, and Kenzan, the potter who collaborated with his elder brother, Kōrin, to produce works of remarkable design, are well known. By contrast, opportunities to encounter the works by Fukae Roshū, also a follower of Kōrin, or Tatebayashi Kagei, who studied under Kenzan and came to be regarded as “Kōrin III,” are exceedingly rare today.

Featuring also works returning to Japan for this occasion from the Cleveland Museum of Art in the United States, the exhibition offers a comprehensive overview of the little-known “Kōrin School” and sheds new light on the history of Rimpa.