SHOWA PERIOD (20TH CENTURY), EACH SIGNED KOUN TO

Koun began his career at age eleven as a craftsman skilled in carving Buddhist icons in the city of Edo (now Tokyo). The son of a petty gangster in the downtown district, he was apprenticed for ten years to the Buddhist sculptor Takamura Toun in the bustling district near the Asakusa Kannon Temple.
Faced with the introduction of European ideas about sculpture, Koun soon adapted to the changing times. During the 1880s, he carved wooden models for bronze sculptures exported to the West. He also carved wood statues of animals for overseas expositions. An artist with unusual technical virtuosity, he deliberately left the wood –usually cherry wood or chestnut—unpainted and natural, intending to show that Japanese artists were close to nature.
Koun’s first commission from the imperial family came in 1889, and in 1890 he was appointed Imperial Household Artist. By 1893, when he represented Japan at the Chicago Columbian Exposition, he was a professor in the Sculpture Department at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts He specialized in imagery celebrating Japan’s artistic heritage, often with political or patriotic overtones expressing loyalty to the young Meiji emperor, his patron.