On a paper support that resembles hanji (Korean paper) in its coarse quality, a single blossom of pure white sweet flag is shown. Kobayashi Kokei, known for his love of sweet flag flowers, sometimes asked people to bring him flowers of various kinds which he then would sketch repeatedly. He used this as an inspiration to paint the hanging scroll Sweet Flag (Yamatane Museum), shown at the Thirty-Seventh Inten Exhibition in 1952, where he arranged the flowers in a Ko-Imari (Old Imari) style vase, a treasured item from his own collection. The work represents ten sweet flag flowers of various shades competing beautifully in their splendor. Kokei first painstakingly outlined the contours of the vase and flowers in ink, then added an array of colors such as light and dark greens, ultramarine, pale blue, carmine, indigo, orpiment and crimson. The present work with its single stalk of sweet flag, considering the specifics of the signature, must date to around 1931 when Kokei was fourty-eight years old. In contrast to the scroll at the Yamatane Museum, which exhibits changes in gradation for the ink outlines, the artist left traces of brush lines for the stalk and the leaves but painted the blossom exclusively in layers of shell white, resulting in a gorgeous impression. Especially the pistil of the flower is done in a very light, almost transparent yellow, with a subtlety that seems to imply how the plant is moving lightly and gracefully in a barely noticeable breeze. When choosing subject matter such as this, artists would often place the main motif slightly to the top, bottom, left or right to avoid a monotone impression. However, here it is placed right in the center of the composition. 

Kobayashi Kokei’s real name was Kobayashi Shigeru. He was born on February 11, 1883 in the Tsuchihashi neighborhood of Takada (Nakakubiki District, Niigata Prefecture; now the Omachi area of Joetsu) as the second son of Kobayashi Miki (father) and Yu (mother). The Kobayashi family used to be retainers of the Takada Sakakibara Domain, but Miki found employment in Niigata Prefecture and retired from his position as the Deputy Director of the Niigata Postal Services in the year after Shigeru was born. In a series of misfortunes, Shigeru lost his mother at the age of four, his grandmother at the age of nine, his elder brother at the age of twelve and his father at the age of thirteen. The orphaned Shigeru thus lived with various relatives, and apparently sustained himself with odd jobs, yet in July 1899 his dearest wishes came true when he moved to Tokyo and enrolled in the studio of Kajita Hanko. His works were readily accepted for the exhibitions of the Japan Art Institute, however, in 1907 Hanko’s studio had to close its doors because of the master’s prolonged illness. Kokei received encouragement from Okakura Tenshin and maintained a regular contact with painters such as Imamura Shiko, Yasuda Yukihiko or Maeda Seison, all the while he was developing his own, unique style. Considering the immense adversities that he had to overcome during his early life, the single stalk of sweet flag in the present work, centered plainly in the middle of the composition, and the nearby signature reading “Kokei” appears almost a reflection of the way how Kokei never succumbed to his environment, against all odds carving himself out a career with art in its center. One deems to discover Kokei’s stature embodied in the petals of the splendid flower, with a certain feeling of proudness expressed therein.

Kobayashi Kokei (nihonga painter; 1883–1957)
Born in Niigata Prefecture, Kokei moved to Tokyo to study with Kajita Hanko. Together with Maeda Seison and Yasuda Yukihiko, he counts among the three most eminent painters of the highly regarded Inten (Japan Art Institute) exhibitions. Using nihonga as a starting point, Kokei added naturalism and the decorative to his idiom, eventually arriving at a straightforward neo-classical Japanese painting style. He was appointed a professor at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts and named an Imperial Household Artist and Person of Cultural Merit. Kokei received the Order of Culture in 1950.