Tethered Birds of Prey

Soga Nichokan (or Chokuan II) is an enigmatic artist about whom very little is known. Active until the middle of the seventeenth century, he was an eccentric loner, a disturbing but compelling artistic personality whose portraits of hawks, in particular, have strength and tension tempered by a refined sensitivity to detail.
Judging from the name he used, Nichokuan was probably the son of Soga Chokuan, an independent artist active around 1570 to 1610, who is said to have worked in Echizen province (modern Fukui) for the Asakura daimyo family. Sometime after the downfall of the Asakura, Chokuan moved to the thriving port city of Sakai, just south of present-day Osaka, where he founded a school specializing in bird and flower painting. Although he often depicted hawks on pine trees, a subject favored by the newly rich military rulers of the Momoyama period, his style is surprisingly conservative if compared to the work of Nichokuan.
Nichokuan has masterful control of ink tonalities. He delights in contrasting the delicate mosaic patterning of the birds' feathers. The militant personalities of the hawks were suited to the great Zen temples and the mansions of the military elite who ruled Tokugawa Japan.