Word: tetsuzan
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...well-to-do Japanese homes parents hung long silken kakemono (scroll paintings) of wild ducks in the tokonoma* as tokens to bring their sons safely home again. Those who could afford it hung duck paintings by the man whom conservative Japanese regard as the greatest living wild fowl painter: Tetsuzan Hori, head of the Tokyo and Kyoto Fine Art Schools, one of the last exponents of the ancient Shijo school of naturalistic painters...
Long scrutiny of ducks has given lean, bristle-lipped Tetsuzan ("Iron Mountain") Hori one great round eye, another squinted to half the normal size. Born in Kyoto 46 years ago, he was dedicated by his parents as an artist almost as soon as he could walk. He was apprenticed to the late great Seiho Takeuchi who made him study the lives and habits of wild fowl for 16 years before he might set brush to silk panel. For several hours a day he was made to squat in the marshes, by the duck ponds, silently meditating (a practice he still...