Kosone Seikai (小曽根星海)
Seikai KOSONE (1851 - June 5, 1904) was a businessman, a calligrapher and a seal-engraving artist in Meiji period.
Seikai was his go (pen name). His common name was Shintaro. He was from Nagasaki City.
Brief biography
He was a legitimate child of Kendo KOSONE. He received special education for talented students from early childhood and went to Echizen Province with his father at the age of 13 to have an audience with Shungaku MATSUDAIRA. He moved to Shanghai in China to deal in a variety store, and then returned to Nagasaki one year later. After his father Kendo died, he became the 14th family head of the Kosone family and did businesses energetically. For example, the steamship business, flotation of an ironworks and a pottery, engineering enterprises including the cultivation of the countryside and the reclamation of the seashore, remodeling constructions of more than 100 houses and son on. A pottery started when he opened a kiln on his premises respecting a father's will to revive Kameyama ware and it had continued from 1891 to 1899.
He became a millionaire in Nagasaki, and also was elected a member of a municipal assembly and of a prefectural assembly to be a special staff of the Red Cross Society. He contributed generously to the relief of the poor and the educational work, particularly made an effort for the development of Naminohira elementary school. He also looked for volunteers to pioneer the hillside of Naminohara-jinja Shrine and made an amusement park.
He preferred art of painting, he was good at seal script and clerical script and was skillful at seal-engraving.
The age at death 54. His graveyard is in Naminohira Taihei-ji Temple.