Katsushika Hokusai
Katsushika Hokusai was an Edo artist whose prints, books, drawings, and paintings transformed landscape imagery and visual culture.
People Who Shaped Japan
Masutatsu Ōyama
Masutatsu Ōyama founded Kyokushin Karate and built an international full-contact organisation whose history later became closely intertwined with popular legend.
Hironori Ōtsuka
Hironori Ōtsuka founded Wadō-ryū by developing Karate through his prior study of Shindō Yōshin-ryū jūjutsu and Japanese budō.
Kenwa Mabuni
Kenwa Mabuni founded Shitō-ryū Karate, drawing especially on the teachings of Ankō Itosu and Kanryō Higaonna and a broad study of Okinawan kata.
Chōjun Miyagi
Chōjun Miyagi was the Okinawan Karate teacher who named and systematised Gōjū-ryū from the Naha-te tradition associated with Kanryō Higaonna.
Chikamatsu Monzaemon
Chikamatsu Monzaemon was a Genroku-period playwright whose works transformed both ningyō jōruri puppet theatre and Kabuki.
Izumo no Okuni
Izumo no Okuni is the early-seventeenth-century performer associated with kabuki odori and the origins of Kabuki in Kyoto.
Zeami Motokiyo
Zeami Motokiyo was a Noh actor, playwright, troupe leader, and theorist whose plays and treatises shaped the transmission of Noh.
Kan’ami Kiyotsugu
Kan’ami Kiyotsugu was a fourteenth-century actor, troupe leader, and playwright whose performance innovations helped form Noh theatre.
Sen no Rikyū
Sen no Rikyū was a sixteenth-century tea master whose wabi-cha practice reshaped Japanese tea rooms, utensils, hospitality, and cultural memory.