Artists

Okajima Seikō

Okajima Seikō (岡島清曠, 1827–1877) was a painter of the Shijō school and a student of Yokoyama Seiki. His work connects Kyōto with the painting tradition of Kaga.

Published on: Apr 21, 2026

Kakemono by Okajima Seikō: two birds in the branches of a tree, ink and color. — Two birds on a tree – kakemono by Okajima Seikō (岡島清曠), Edo period (detail)

In a nutshell

Okajima Seikō (岡島清曠) was a Japanese painter of the late Edo and early Meiji periods (1827–1877). He was a student of Yokoyama Seiki, a leading representative of the Shijō school in Kyōto, and is also connected to the painting tradition of Kaga, centered on Kanazawa. His approach to bird-and-flower painting derives from his Shijō training: precise observation of nature, softly modeled ink washes, and sparing use of color. The artist name 清曠 is read Seikō; in the art trade, the reading Kiyohiro is also encountered.

Okajima Seikō (岡島清曠): Shijō Painter Between Kyōto and Kaga

Okajima Seikō (岡島清曠, 1827–1877) was a Japanese painter whose work falls within the late Edo and early Meiji periods. He was a student of Yokoyama Seiki, one of the leading representatives of the Shijō school in Kyōto, and is at the same time connected to the province of Kaga with its center Kanazawa – a region that, under the Maeda lords, had developed an independent and unusually well-endowed artistic landscape.

On the Reading: Seikō, Not Kiyohiro

The artist name 清曠 is read Seikō. In object descriptions and inventory lists, the form "Kiyohiro" is often encountered, which arises from the Japanese readings of the individual characters. Both spellings refer to the same painter; whoever searches for Kiyohiro is searching for Seikō.

The School of Yokoyama Seiki and the Shijō Painting Style

Yokoyama Seiki was among the painters who shaped the Shijō direction in nineteenth-century Kyōto. This direction, which emerged from the Maruyama school, relied on precise observation of nature but dispensed with the hard outline of the older schools: forms arise from graduated layers of ink, color is applied sparingly and deliberately. This proved especially suited to flower-and-bird painting, because feather, blossom, and branch thereby retain their material distinctiveness.

The Bird in the Fruit-Bearing Tree

A bird in the branches of a fruit tree fixes the picture to a particular week of the year — blossom, fruit set, and ripe fruit each denote a different point in time, and Shijō painting takes this distinction seriously. Its strength lies in the fact that feather, bark, and leaf retain their material distinctiveness even though scarcely any color is involved: everything arises from graduated layers of ink, into which pigment is set at only a few points. Those who arrange kakemono by the calendar find the finest gradations in this genre.