Katsushiro Sōhō (b. 1934)

A native of Tochigi Prefecture, Katsushiro Sōhō began his career by making bamboo farm tools after graduating from secondary school. In his mid-teens he trained with a local bamboo craftsman Kikuchi Yoshii; this was followed by apprenticeships with the bamboo master, Yagisawa Keizō (1927 - 2006) and later with Saitō Bunseki (1910 - 1991). Katsushiro Sōhō’s work was first selected for the 15th Japan Traditional Art Crafts Exhibition in 1967. He later became an evaluator and judge for that series of exhibitions and received the NHK Chairman’s Award in 1997. In 2005, he was designated a Living National Treasure in the field of bamboo art. His work was one of the ‘Eighty-three Selected Treasures of the Heisei Era’ included in the 2017 post-restoration re-dedication of the East Pagoda of the Yakushiji Temple, Nara. Recent exhibitions devoted to his art have been held at the Ibara Municipal Denchu Art Museum (2017) and at the Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts (2020). His works are in the collections of numerous institutions including Ibara Municipal Denchu Art Museum, Ibara City; the Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts, Utsunomiya, Tochigi; the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco.