Kamoshita Chōko

Kamoshita Chōko (鴨下晁湖, 1890–1967) was a Japanese-style (nihonga) painter and print designer who worked in both the bijin-ga (beautiful women) and historical-subject genres. He studied historical painting in the Yamato-e manner under Matsumoto Fukō, and the figure-painting skills he developed there carried over into both his paintings and his woodblock print designs. He exhibited at the government-sponsored Bunten and Teiten salons and also worked as a newspaper and magazine illustrator.

Kamoshita's prints include bijin-ga subjects depicting women in traditional dress, as well as historical and literary subjects drawn from Japanese history and legend. His historical work reflects the early-twentieth-century Japanese interest in revisiting the nation's past through visual art, with attention to period costume and setting.

Kamoshita was active during the period of the shin-hanga (new print) movement, working in the collaborative model typical of the era, in which publishers commissioned designs that were carved and printed by skilled craftsmen. He was not one of the movement's central figures, and his print output is not extensively covered in the standard shin-hanga references.

Kamoshita died in 1967. His work is represented in institutional collections — a Shōwa-period painting, Elderly Geisha (Rōgi), is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art — and his prints continue to interest collectors of bijin-ga and historical Japanese figure prints from the early modern period.