青木繁

Shigeru Aoki brought Japanese mythology into Western-style painting at a moment when yōga was transforming Japan's artistic landscape. Born in Kurume in 1882, he left home at sixteen to study in Tokyo, first under Koyama Shōtarō and then at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts under Kuroda Seiki. His breakthrough came in 1903 when the Hakuba-kai exhibition recognized his synthesis of Pre-Raphaelite technique with subjects from the Kojiki.