Kinji Koshiba

Kinji Koshiba (小柴錦侍, 1889–1961) was a Japanese painter in the yōga (Western-style) tradition. Born in Tokyo, the second son of Koshiba Ei — a pioneer of lithographic printing in Japan — he graduated from the Tokyo Higher Technical School in 1911 and then spent about nine years in France, studying at Maurice Denis’s Académie Ranson and the École du Louvre before returning to Japan in 1920. In Japan he studied under Matsuoka Hisashi, Mitsutani Kunishirō and Wada Eisaku. A devout Catholic, Koshiba was best known for religious and Marian paintings, several of which won special selection (tokusen) at the Imperial Academy of Art Exhibition (Teiten); he also exhibited with the Sōgenkai. He evacuated to Karuizawa during the war and died in Tokyo in 1961.