Metempsychosis (Yokoyama Taikan)

Metempsychosis (生々流転, Seisei ruten), alternatively translated as The Wheel of Life, is a painting by Japanese Nihonga artist Yokoyama Taikan.

First displayed at the tenth Inten exhibition in 1923, it forms part of the collection of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, and has been designated an Important Cultural Property.

Along the way the long landscape scroll is populated by human figures – woodcutters, travellers, and fishermen – and suggestions of the divine, a stone lantern and a torii.

[2][5][10][11] In the scroll, Yokoyama Taikan reworked the ink paintings of Sesshū and Sesson while drawing also on the traditions of Yamato-e.[11] His varied shading includes the one-sided katabokashi (片ぼかし) technique and effects akin to Western chiaroscuro; a few years later, during his 1930 visit to Italy, he would be struck by Leonardo's use of sfumato.

[5] At the end of the scroll is the inscription "Taishō Water Pig (1923), eighth month, by Taikan" (大正癸亥八月大観作), along with the artist's Shōkodō (鉦鼓洞) seal.