Mashiyama Sessai

Sessai Masuyama was a ""daimyo(a feudal Lord)"" who ruled Nagashima, the land which lay between the Kiso and Ibi rivers in the northernmost part of the Ise region. Born in 1754, he succeeded as the lord of Nagashima in 1776. But in 1801, he retired from that position to indulge himself in his own elegant and carefree life in Edo.

As can been seen from his career, he was already widely known as a distinguished intellectual at the time besides his formal title as a feudal lord. His intimate friendship with the famous intellectual and dilettant Kenkado Kimura, brewer of sake in Osaka, and others, which crossed over class barriers, is a good example of the new social circumstances of that age which was nearing modernity.

Sessai was a cultivated man of versatile taste who excelled in tea ceremony, poetry and other arts. His talent showed most, however, in painting, particularly in painting of flowers and birds. The characteristics of his flower and bird paintings were the vivid colors and the realistic depiction of forms.