Josetsu

Josetsu (如拙) was one of the earliest Japanese painters working in ink monochrome (sumi-e) during the Muromachi period in the fifteenth century, and is often regarded as the father of Japanese ink painting. A Chinese immigrant who became naturalised in 1370, he bridged the Southern Song masters such as Ma Yuan, Xia Gui, Liang Kai and Mu Qi and the new style emerging in Japan. He was probably the teacher of Tenshō Shūbun at Shokoku-ji monastery in Kyoto.

His only work whose authenticity is firmly established is Catching a Catfish with a Gourd (c. 1413), held at Taizō-in, a sub-temple of Myōshin-ji in Kyoto. It shows a comically awkward fisherman trying to catch an elusive fish with a gourd, beside a winding river and bamboo grove. Curved lines of landscape contrast with the harder strokes of the man, and the subject appears to draw on a Chinese saying about the impossible.

The painting is said to have been commissioned by the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimochi, who summoned monks from the Five Mountains to comment on it. Today it is read as Zen humour or as a visual kōan, meant to provoke a sudden insight in the viewer.