Hattori Niryū
Year unknown
Donated by Watanabe Riemon
Hattori Niryū (1904-1968) was born in Banbadōri in Nijōyanagi, Kyōto (modern Kyōto City, Kyōto Prefecture). He was the second son of the Nanga-style painter Hattori Gorō. His real name was Tatsuo. He was also known as Souryū and Keidō among other names. In 1917, he left Kyōto Prefectural First Middle School (currently Kyōto Prefectural Rakuhoku Senior High School) in the midst of the ongoing term, coming under the tutelage of Hashimoto Kansetsu. He was selected for the fourth and fifth Japan Nanga-in Exhibition. Around 1935, he was expelled by his teacher Hashimoto Kansetsu, and the next year he moved to Tsuruoka, where his mother, divorced from his father, lived. His distant relative, the author Matsudaira Bokudō, organized the “Niryū Hattori Artist Association”. Wandering around town, Niryū’s eccentricity began to become conspicuous, and from the war years, he began to live at Bokudō’s home. In his later years, he was frequently hospitalized for mental illness.