In a society where group dynamics, deferred gratification, and sticking to the plan have always been paramount, the occasional cross current that tells you to live in the moment, do the unexpected, and seek truth directly, blows like a real breath of fresh air. This explains the appeal of Zen, and the growing appeal of the paintings of Kako Tsuji, an artist deeply influenced by Zen, whose work is now enjoying a major retrospective at the National Museum of Modern Art (MOMAT).

The Japanese intellectual Tenshin Okakura and the American professor Ernst Fenollosa, who taught at Tokyo University and was a promoter of modernized Japanese arts, responded to the cultural challenge of Western art by stridently rejecting it, and setting up the Tokyo Fine Arts Academy in 1888 to preserve indigenous artistic traditions. Artists in Kyoto, though, such as Kono Bairei and his apprentices, persevered in the old ways in a less nationalistically self-conscious or purist way, as the former capital was largely shaded from the glare and flash of Western influences that were making inroads in Tokyo.

Born in 1871, Kako began studying under Bairei at the age of nine. As one of the foremost artists of his day, Bairei had about 60 apprentices, according to Kaori Tsurumi, the curator of the exhibition at MOMAT.