Murakami Gyōjin

Japanese, 1911 – 1998

BiographyMurakami Gyojin (村上暁人) was born in Inoshima, Hiroshima Prefecture, on March 1st. While working for the Hitachi Shipbuilding Company in Hiroshima he was also a keen amateur painter, and this continued after he had moved to Kobe to work for the JR Takatori Company. As a painter he made both oil paintings and Japanese-style paintings. After the war he felt he had been given a second chance at life and he started using his artist's name (Gyojin, literally "Dawn person").

When the Minatogawa temple in Kobe was being rebuilt in Kobe after the war, Munakata Shiko asked him to join in the project of decorating the ceiling of the prayer room. He became Munakata's pupil and joined the Banga-in, founded by Munakata in 1952, and since 1984 better known as the Nihon Hanga-in. He started to live in Akashi city (west of Kobe), near the sea, and the theme of the sea is a recurrent theme in his work. He died on May 21st, 1998.

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