Jiun Onko (1718-1804)

Jiun Onko's calligraphy is spirited and powerful. The dark and weighty characters reveal the feathery strokes of dry brush ends. The artist is a highly idiosyncratic practitioner of the Chinese-style, unorthodox expressionist style of Zen masters. He was a scholar of Sanskrit, Confucianism and Buddhism. In 1776, at the age of 58, he established a hermitage at Kokiji Temple in Kawachi, Osaka Prefecture, which he established as the headquarters of his own sect of Shingon Buddhism, Shoboritsu (True Doctrine Discipline). Most of his extant caligraphies derive from his tenure there. For four examples in the Barnet and Burto Collection, see Miyeko Murase, The Written Image: Japanese Calligraphy and Painting from the Sylvan Barnet and William Burto Collection (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002), pls. 49-52.