Tanaka Isson

Stone Monument to Southern Kyushu Literature

Haiku Poetry Monument of Tanaka Isson at Cape Ayamaru

Footprints of Amami City’s solitary painter.

Cape Ayamaru, located on northern Amami Oshima, is surrounded by a huge cluster of cycads. From high above, overlooking this place, is a haiku poem monument of Tanaka Isson (real name: Tanaka Takashi 1908-77), a Japanese painter who boldly depicted the plants and animals of Amami.

His father was a sculptor and Isson was called prodigy and entered Tokyo Art School (currently Tokyo University of the Arts). However, he dropped out after 2 months. He lost his mother, father, and brother, one after another and at the end of 1958, when he was 50 years old, Tanaka Isson moved to Amami Oshima, at the time when it was southernmost point of Japan. He moved with the determination to “paint until the end of his life.”

<Alone on the hot sand, sketching screw pines> Subtropical flora and fauna, such as screw pines, banyan trees, birds, and fish fascinated Isson. In the margins of the sketchbook that he left behind are several haiku poems, written with painter-like eyes. He rented a small tin roof house and became a dyer of Oshima Tsumugi kimonos, which earned him a 450-yen daily wage. He often went out for early morning walks with his sketchbook and camera and took the bus to see the colony of cycads around Cape Ayamaru. The death of his sister, who was his greatest supporter, led him to an extremely frugal lifestyle and he continued to paint Amami on silk screens with all his body and soul. However, his health gradually deteriorated, and he passed away quietly in September 1977 at age 69.

After his death, a married potter couple from the island, who had been friends with Isson when he was alive, had an ardent desire to hold a solo exhibition for Isson and, after this show, his existence as an unknown man painting on the island began to change drastically.

 

The exhibition, held with the cooperation of newspaper reporters, art teachers, and islanders, displayed 12 posthumous large-scale works and designs, including “Kuwazuimo to Sotetsu (Giant Upright Elephant Ear and Cycad),” which Isson had once said that he had brought as a souvenir to King Enma, the king of hell. Over the three days, the exhibition was visited by over 3,000 islanders and people were surprised and moved by his overwhelming work and his solitary way of life.

Before long, Isson’s work was featured on NHK’s Nichiyo Bijutsukan (Sunday Art Museum) program, and it caused an exceptional response. With successive exhibitions and the publishing of his biography, Isson Takana’s name has become known across the country. More and more people are coming to Amami to follow in his footsteps and check out his sketching locations, one after the other. So, the local cultural association, along with others, focused on erecting a stone monument near one of the locations where the sketches were drawn, a cycad colony.

 

<Suna Shiroku Shio wa Aoku Chidori Nageku >

(The sand is all white, the tide is totally blue, the plover bird sings)

This haiku written by Isson was carved onto the monument. In 2001, Kagoshima Prefecture built the Tanaka Isson Memorial Museum, and Isson’s paintings have been featured in art textbooks, alongside other notable artists. Isson once said that he hoped people would “recognize my paintings in fifty or a hundred years’ time.” The realization of his dream came surprisingly quickly. His dream surprisingly came true faster than he expected.

 

Posted on Minami Nihon Shinbun ”Southern Kyushu Bungaku no Ishibumi(Monument of Literiture)” August 3rd, 2024

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<References>

Minami Nihon Shinbun, August 9^th, 1986

Koho Kasari, September 1986

“Adan no Gabyo Tanaka Isson Den”, edited by Minami Nihon Shinbun, Shogakukan, 1995

“Tanaka Isson Aratanaru Zenbo”, Chiba City Museum of Art, Kagoshima City Museum of Art, Tanaka Isson Memorisl Museum of Art, 2010