kawanabe kyōsai was a japanese artist, in the words of a critic, "an individualist and an independent, perhaps the last virtuoso in traditional japanese painting". living through the edo period to the meiji period, kyōsai witnessed japan transform itself from a feudal country into a modern state. born at koga, he was the son of a samurai. his first aesthetic shock was at the age of nine when he picked up a human head apart from a corpse in the kanda river. after working for a short time as a boy with utagawa kuniyoshi, he received his artistic training in the kanō school, but soon abandoned t…