Tanaka Isson

4 months ago 9

Tanaka Isson (1908-77) was a Japanese painter who was unrecognized by the art establishment. In 1958, he decided to leave the Japanese mainland and moved to a small tropical island named Amami Oshima – halfway between the main Japanese islands and Okinawa.

Take a look at these otherworldly paintings of island wildlife:

You can read a short summary of Tanaka Isson’s life in this 2018 Japan Times writeup.

To see the lush nature of Amami Oshima, I recommend watching one of the videos below. They’re by TV Treasure Peter Barakan and you can watch them without ads on NHK:

AMAMI OSHIMA: Isson’s Treasure Island (49 min)
and the Japanology Plus episode Amami Oshima: Paradise Found (28 min)

This island is so lush and beautiful. It’s really something else.

I found it interesting how someone so good was in complete obscurity from the world. He was only “discovered” after his death in 1977 – when it turned out that his modest house was stuffed with artwork.

I read an observation that people who got famous became famous because that’s what they worked for. They didn’t work on “becoming good”. The observation was that being good and being famous are completely separate qualities that a person could optimize for.

To learn more about Isson, you can search for his alternative names: Tanaka Takashi (田中孝) and his art name Tanaka Isson (田中一村).