It is often difficult to fathom how an artist so popular in his own time slides into oblivion in subsequent generations. 2010 has been a good year for one such artist, Komura Settai (1887-1940), who in his time was a prolific creator, producing illustrations, woodblock prints and stage designs. His recent artistic rehabilitation began with a large-scale exhibition of his varied career at the Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, followed by a special edition of the art monthly "Geijutsu Shincho" dedicated to the artist.

"The World of Komura Settai: The Aesthetic Sense and Sensibility of an Unknown Virtuoso Painter" continues the renewed interest in the artist's oeuvre with a show of around 60 works drawn from a collection inherited by Komura's only pupil, Yamamoto Takeshi, and now housed at the Kiyomizu Sannenzaka Museum in Kyoto.

Komura had a conventional start to his artistic career, studying nihonga (Japanese painting) in the atelier of Araki Kampo (1831-1915) in 1903 and then entering the nihonga course at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts the following year. He graduated four years later and from 1910-12 he created copies of old artworks for the art monthly "Kokka," for which his depiction of "Fugen Enmei" (undated), a Bodhisattva seated on a lotus supported by four elephants, would be representative of his employment at the time. A few years later, in 1918, Komura left behind the fine art world to take up a position at Shiseido where, among other things, he designed perfume bottles.