Takamura Kōun

Takamura Kōun (born March 19, 1852, Edo [now Tokyo], Japan—died Oct. 10, 1934, Tokyo) was a Japanese sculptor who worked to preserve the art of wood carving.

Takamura studied Buddhist sculpture under Takamura Tōun, later succeeding to his master’s art and name. He had to endure poverty in order to continue making wood sculpture, since ivory was the favoured medium of the 1870s and 1880s. In 1887, when the Tokyo Fine Arts School was opened, he was invited by two art historians, Ernest F. Fenollosa and Okakura Tenshin, to head its wood-carving department. Takamura worked to free wood carving from the Buddhist tradition by stressing a realistic approach to his models. On the whole, however, he remained within the limits of traditional wood sculpture. His representative works are Aged Monkey and the bronze statues Nankō dōzō and Saigō Takamori dōzō.