Born in Akaoka Town where Ekin led his life, I have enjoyed Ekin's paintings displayed on the nights of Summer Festival since I was a child.Ekin has been described as a heavy drinker and wild fellow in some comments. However, according to his last students who lived until about 40 years ago, Ekin thought much of his family and loved painting from the bottom of his heart.The bloody scenes shown in his Shibai-e were the ones actually performed on the stage those days.In that sense, Ekin's Shibai-e was far from"heretic"at that time. I think the comment"heretic"is rather an evaluation from the viewpoint of present people. The charm of Ekin deepens as I study him further.

My family have been making Tosa Kites and Furafu (flags) through four generations since the time of my great grandfather who was a direct apprentice of Ekin. Last year, I opened my house to the public as Ekin Museum. The exhibits there had been bought and and collected by my father through his life.In order to decide a work to be a genuine Ekin's, I have judged it by examining a background scenery unlike the generally accepted way of checking faces, hands and legs described in the picture.Thus, I have been looking at his"Hakubyo-ga"(drawings with black ink alone) for some decades, and yet I havn't found any faults in his drawings nor get tired of looking at them. Giving an impression of"Sharaku"paintings in a more modern way, Ekin's drawings have such a high sense of modernity that we can hardly believe they were created over a hundred years ago. I hope you will pay attention to the artistic quality of Hakubyo-ga as well as Shibai-e. I'm afraid another Ekin with strong character and dessin skills will not appear any more.Mr. Yoshikawa is one and only successor of traditional Tosa Kites. Now, he is handing down the skills to Mr. Tsuyoshi Yoshikawa, his son and the 5th generation.

Judging from the modern paintings in general, Ekin is a highly talented painter and shows his genius especially in the graphic structure.Last year, the Ekin Research and Preservation Committee was inaugurated, and the committee traced and researched Ekin's works which still remain today. Since Shibai-e was more like commercial arts than fine arts those days, no signatures are found on the works. As quite a few others painted pictures similar to Ekin's, it will be our future task to tell those works from Ekin's.In Ekin's paintings, one scene often shows the whole story of a drama. I am very interested in his power of graphic structure and despcription. Though his pictures cannot help giving us bloody, grotesque images, I guess he himself was a typical Tosa-jin (native Kochi person) with frank temperament.I would like to understand more deeply the attractiveness of Ekin as I further study about him.

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