Runin Shunkan 流人俊寛 / Gekko zuihitsu 月耕随筆

From the Gekko zuihitsu series, this print depicts Shunkan (俊寛), the Buddhist priest exiled to the remote island of Kikaijima for his role in a conspiracy against the Taira clan in the late twelfth century. Shunkan's story, preserved in the Heike Monogatari and dramatized in Noh and Kabuki, is one of solitude and tragic abandonment — when a pardon finally arrived for his fellow exiles, Shunkan alone was excluded and left behind. Gekko likely rendered him as an emaciated, isolated figure on a rocky shore, watching the departing boat, a composition with strong diagonal movement and an empty, windswept ground. The subject demanded an emotional register distinct from Gekko's warrior and bijin-ga work, and the Gekko zuihitsu series gave him latitude to explore precisely these quieter, melancholic literary moments.