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Yanagisawa Kien [Yanagisawa Rikyo; Ryu Rikyo; Kien; Chikukei]
(b Edo [now Tokyo], 1706; d Koriyama [now in Nara Prefect.], 1758). Japanese painter and calligrapher. With Gion Nankai and Sakaki Hyakusen, he was one of the pioneers of Japanese literati painting (Nanga or Bunjinga; see JAPAN, §VI, 4(vi)(e)). Born into the influential Yanagisawa family, who ruled the domain of Koriyama, he received a Confucian education in Edo, one of his teachers being the famous Confucian scholar and calligrapher Ogyu Sorai (1666–1728). Kien also received painting lessons from a minor master of the KANO SCHOOL but soon became dissatisfied and began to study Chinese paintings and calligraphy of the Ming period (1368–1644), which were available to him in the form of woodblock-printed books and imported originals. He became directly acquainted with Chinese literati culture by studying with Chinese Zen monks of the Obaku (Chin. Huang bo) sect and was taught Chinese-style calligraphy (karajo) by Hosoi Kotaku. Kien also mastered the Sixteen Noble Accomplishments that were expected of a samurai, which included military arts, poetry and the tea ceremony, but his amateur artistic pursuits seem to have interested him more than his political and military duties. (He became head of his family in 1730.)
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