Josetsu

Josetsu was a Zen painter-monk active in Kyoto in the early fifteenth century and one of the founders of suiboku ink painting in Japan. Resident at Shōkoku-ji, he is regarded as the teacher of Tenshō Shūbun, who carried his Chinese-derived landscape style into the Ashikaga painting academy.

His best-known work, Catching a Catfish with a Gourd, painted around 1413, depicts a comical fisherman against a winding river and a bamboo grove. It is thought to be inspired by a riddle posed by the Ashikaga shōgun, how to catch a catfish with a gourd, and reads as Zen humour or a visual kōan.