Early Life and Ancestral Shadows Iwasa Matabei, born Araki Katsumochi in 1578, entered a world already steeped in the drama of Japan’s turbulent Sengoku period. His lineage was inextricably linked to the fate of powerful clans, a heritage that would profoundly shape his artistic trajectory. His father, Araki Murashige, was a prominent daimyō—a feudal lord—whose eventual forced suicide under Toyotomi Hideyoshi cast a long shadow over young Katsumochi’s life. Raised by his mother's family, adopting the Iwasa name, he inherited not only a new identity but also a poignant awareness of political…
A chart of Iwasa Matabei's corpus mapped not by date but by subject. Spokes are what they painted; rings are when; and the threads between stars reveal the patrons and places that secretly connect them.
Each arm of the atlas gathers works by what they depict: portraits, sacred scenes, mythologies, and the scientific studies. Click a spoke to swing that cluster to the top.
Distance from the center marks time. The innermost ring is the earliest period; the outermost, the final years. Style matures as you move outward.
Coloured lines link works bound by the same patron, commission, or theme. Trace a context to watch related clusters light up across subjects.
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