Shiba Kōkan
1784 (Tenmei 4)
Tangible Cultural Property, designated by Sakata city
Donated by the Homma family
Shiba Kōkan(1747-1818) was a painter who achieved the first production of a copper corrosion engraving in Japan, and who was known for his distinctive oil-based color paintings.
This image allows us to see the landscapes of the area around Azabu and Hirō as they were around 230 years ago, with a single tea house standing amongst the wide-open, beautiful countryside of the Musashino plain with a distant view of Mt.Fuji in the distance.
Kōkan would hold drinking parties at the “Old Man Tea House” in Hirō alongside the scholar of Western sciences Katsuragawa Hoshū and others, and the “Old Man Tea House” in this image is thought to represent that establishment. This was produced as a megane-e, a painting to be viewed through a convex lens that would give the image something of a 3-D effect, so left and right have been reversed.