Okuhara Seiko. Okuhara Seiko Okuhara Seiko was a Literati artist in Japan in the late 1800s.
She became a leading artist in Japan founding an art school and displaying her art throughout the country. In 1891, at the age of fifty-five, Seiko decided to retire to a country village.
The paintings created by Seiko following her retirement are highly regarded and considered to be some of her finest work. Born into the samurai class and renowned for her success as a painter, Seiko resided primarily in Edo-Tokyo, a political and social center of her time.
She continued to reside in Edo, where she taught painting and lived in her later years with her companion and student, Watanabe Seiran. Her work is influenced by the Kano school, but is categorized as within the nanga literati school.
Seiko, like most successful Japanese artists of her time, adapted Chinese literati styles to Japanese tastes. Seiko is notable for her established and well-recognized career during the Meiji period, as well as her reputation within the primarily male literati school. Early in her career, she changed her name from Setsuko to the gender-neutral Seiko. Her work has been characterized as masculine in both painting and calligraphy, which may be attributed both to the liberal lifestyle she maintained and the role of women painters at the time. Seiko was also noted for wearing masculine clothing and short hair, deliberately