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(8) Kano Sanraku [Kimura Heizo; Shuri; Mitsuyori; Sanraku]
(b Shiga Prefect., 1559; d Kyoto, 1635). Apprentice and adopted son of (5) Kano Eitoku. His father was Kimura Nagamitsu ( fl c. 1570), a samurai and amateur painter who supposedly studied with (2) Kano Motonobu. In the 1570s Sanraku served as a page to Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who recognized his artistic talent and arranged for him to become apprenticed to Eitoku, the leading artist of the day. Sanraku distinguished himself among Eitoku’s pupils and was eventually adopted into the Kano family. Eitoku and Sanraku evidently developed a close working relationship: when Eitoku fell ill in 1588 while restoring the dragon painting on the ceiling of the main hall of the Tofukuji in Kyoto, he left the completion of the project to Sanraku, whose immense dragon (l. 54.5 m; destr. 1884) was coiled within a ring of clouds painted by his master. Many works once attributed to Eitoku have been reassigned to his pupil, who developed a more lyrical and mannered version of the taiga style of screen-and-wall painting in colours and gold leaf (kinpeki shohekiga) originated by Eitoku. Free-standing folding screens have been reliably attributed to Sanraku by means of a rectangular intaglio seal reading Shuri, a square tripod seal reading Mitsu (with a complex second character which has not been deciphered definitively) and a tripod seal without square reading Mitsuyori. After Eitoku’s death in 1590, Sanraku continued to receive commissions from Toyotomi Hideyoshi. In 1594 he and (7) Kano Mitsunobu undertook the decoration of Momoyama Castle in Fushimi (now part of Kyoto; destr.), the residence to which Hideyoshi had retired. Sanraku’s loyalty to the house of Toyotomi outlived its fall in 1615, when the artist took refuge at the Takinomotobo Hachiman Shrine in the mountains of Otokoyama. The literatus and monk Shokado Shojo interceded on his behalf, and he was granted an audience by the new shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542–1616), at Sunpu Castle. By that time he had become a monk and had probably assumed the Buddhist name Sanraku, by which he is best known. He subsequently received the honorary religious title hokkyo (Bridge of the Law). Although the main Kano workshop had moved to the new capital at Edo (now Tokyo), Sanraku remained in Kyoto, where he established the Kyo Kano studio, but he continued to be patronized by the military hierarchy in Edo, especially the second Tokugawa shogun, Tokugawa Hidetada (1579–1632).
Part of the Kano family
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