Tanabe Kōunsai (1898 - 1987)

Tanabe Kōunsai was a member of the famous Chikuunsai family of bamboo artists: he was a cousin of Chikuunsai II (1910 - 2000). Aged around seventeen, Tanabe Kōunsai, together with his younger cousin Chikuunsai II, aged five, demonstrated his skill at hexagonal plaiting during an exhibition of the work of Chikuunsai I (1877 - 1937), held at the Mitsukoshi Department Store in Osaka. No further information is available regarding this member of the Tanabe lineage, but a basket in the Naej collection signed Tanabe Kōunsai is dated 1924.