Kakizaki Hakyo
A senior retainer (karo) of the Matsumae domain in the late Edo period, who is also renowned as a painter. His best-known work is "Ishu Retsuzo" (Portraits of Ainu Chiefs), and he also left bird-and-flower paintings and figure paintings he studied under Maruyama Okyo in Kyoto.
Kakizaki Hakyo was born in 1764 at Fukuyama Castle in Matsumae, the fifth son of the Matsumae domain lord Matsumae Suehiro, and as a small child was adopted into the Kakizaki family, a retainer house. He loved painting from childhood and in Edo studied under Takebe Ryotai of the Nanpin school and then under So Shiseki. Later, as a senior retainer, he took part in running the domain's government while continuing to paint.
After the Kunashir-Menashi War of 1789, Hakyo was ordered by the domain lord to paint portraits of 12 Ainu chiefs who had cooperated with the domain, and he completed "Ishu Retsuzo" in 1790. The work became the talk of Kyoto and is said to have been seen by Emperor Kokaku. In Kyoto he studied under Maruyama Okyo, and from then on his style turned to a gentle manner based on sketching from life. He was also skilled at Chinese-style poetry, leaving more than 500 poems, so he had a side as a literatus too. He was also called the "Matsumae Okyo."
When the Matsumae domain was transferred in 1807 to Yanagawa in Mutsu Province (now Fukushima Prefecture), Hakyo moved with it, and he died in 1826, after the domain had returned to its old territory. His works remain in places such as the Hokkaido Hakodate Museum of Art and the Hakodate City Central Library, and the library's "Ishu Retsuzo Funpon" (preparatory copies of the portraits) is designated a tangible cultural property of Hokkaido.
