(b Settsu [now Osaka], 1578; d Edo [now Tokyo], 1650). Japanese painter. He was the son of Araki Murashige ( fl 1568–1580), lord of Itami Castle in Settsu, but he grew up in Kyoto using his mother’s surname, Iwasa, after his family was destroyed by Oda Nobunaga in 1579. His painting master probably was Kano Naizen (1570–1616), but Matabei also may have worked with Tosa Mitsunori (1583–1638), for he signed his Thirty-six Poets (1640; Saitama Prefect., Kawagoe Toshogu Shrine) ‘Iwasa Matabei Katsumochi, descendant of Tosa Mitsunobu’. Matabei borrowed freely from both the KANO SCHOOL and TOSA SCHOOL traditions to render the classical figural themes of China and Japan in eloquent stylizations that present the subjects with uncanny psychological acuity. The 12 paintings once pasted on a pair of six-panel folding screens (byobu) known as the Kanaya byobu (‘Kanaya screens’) after a former owner, display Matabei’s range of traditional subjects and styles—from dragon-and-tiger ink paintings to polychrome scenes from Japanese literature. In his portraits of the Heian period court poets, Kakimoto no Hitomaro ( fl c. 685–705) and Ki no Tsurayuki (c. 872–945) (Atami, MOA Mus. A.), he blended the two traditions, rendering his subjects unconventionally in a loose monochrome-ink style. In around 1616 Matabei went to Echizen Province (now Fukui Prefect.) to serve Matsudaira Tadanao (1595–1650). Tadanao’s cruel temperament led him to commit murder, which resulted in his exile in 1623. It has been conjectured that the realism of the murder scenes in the Yamanaka Tokiwa emaki (‘Yamanaka Tokiwa handscroll’; Atami, MOA Mus. A.) may have been Matabei’s response to his patron’s brutal nature. Matabei remained in Fukui until 1637, when he was summoned to Edo to serve for the Tokugawa shogunate.

• Iwasa Matabei
  • Japan, §VI, 4(iv)(b): Painting: Late: Genre painting: Ukiyoe