Hamano Iron Tsuba with Ant motif in Shakudo and Gold. NBTHK Hozon Certificate
The Hamano school (浜野)
Hamano Shōzui (浜野政随), 1st gen.
The founder of the Hamano school was Shōzui, who was a student
of Nara Toshinaga (利寿) mentioned in the genealogy on the previous
page. His first name was „Tarōbei“ (太郎兵衛) and he was born in the
ninth year of Genroku (1696). After finishing his apprenticeship with
Toshinaga he parted with the Nara school and pursued very successful
his own career. His school was very capable of keeping up with the
Yokoya school in terms of number of students and influence on the
machibori movement. Simply spoken, he combined the styles of the
Yokoya and the Nara school with the interpretations of Sugiura Jōi, that
means he worked in takabori-iroe and in zōgan but with larger-sized
motifs than those use by the Nara school, enriched with usunikubori and
shishiaibori. And regarding his selection of motifs, he chose various
historical, epic, worldly and figurative subjects, as well as a broad
variety of plants and animals.
Besides the Nara-sansaku (Nara Toshinaga, Sugiura Jōi and
Tsuchiya Yasuchika), Shōzui is counted as the fourth great master that
the Nara school has brought forth, i.e. the so-called „Nara Shitennō“
(奈良四天王). But it has to be mentioned that Shōzui and Jōi formed a
rather somewhat separated pair in this group because there were about
thirty years between them and the contemporaries Toshinaga and
Yasuchika.
Regarding his signatures, he always used the old version (濱) for
„Hama“ (浜) and zui“ (随) is also signed with the non-simplified style
(隨). The „Tōsō-kodōgu-kōza“ assumes that the characters for „Shōzui“
were back then probably read by their Japanese reading „Masayuki“
and that the Sino-Japanese reading had became widely used only in
recent times. By the way, the „Tōsō-kodōgu-kōza“ was published in
1972. However, the names of all subsequent generations are usually
quoted in the Japanese reading.
Shōzui used more than a dozen pseudonyms, for example
„Otsuryūken“ (乙柳軒),*49 „Miboku“ (味墨), “Shūhōsai“ (龝峰斎),
„Yūkotei“ (遊壷亭), „Keitō“ (圭竇) and „Keitōrin“ (圭竇林). The gō
„Otsuryūken“ and „Miboku“ in turn were also used by later Hamano
mainline artists and it is said that students were not allowed to sign with
these pseudonyms.
Hamano Shōzui died on the 26th day of the tenth month of Meiwa
six (1769) at the age of 74. He is buried in the Eikyū-ji (永久寺) in
Tōkyō´s Taitōku district. The gravestone of the Hamano family, which
was erected according to transmission by the 2nd gen. Kaneyuki, is still
extant.
