Watanabe Kazan is not nearly as well known in Western countries as his contemporary Katsushika Hokusai, whose works had such a huge influence on Western art.
But Kazan, as Donald Keene's new biography demonstrates, deserves to be studied not only as an artist who produced works of the highest quality but also as a samurai who was both a student of Confucianism and of Rangaku (Dutch i.e. foreign learning), and who warned the bakufu of the dangers it faced from abroad.
Keene has produced a fascinating and readable study of a remarkable figure of the late Tokugawa Period. As we would expect from someone of Keene's outstanding scholarship, the book is based on thorough research.