Torajirō Kojima
Japanese, 1881-1929
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Torajirō Kojima was a leading Impressionist painter in Japan.
Torajiro Kojima was first a disciple of Takeji Fujishima and then attended the University of Fine Arts and Music in Tokyo, and in 1908 went to Paris to continue his studies.
In 1909 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent, Belgium, where he trained in Luminism. From 1920 onwards, after a decade back in Japan, he travelled to Europe several times at the request of Magosaburo Ohara, his patron and a Japanese businessman and philanthropist who founded the Ōhara Art Museum with the intention of filling it with Western art by Emile Claus, Jean-Joseph Delvin, Monet, Matisse, Albert Marquet and sculptures by Rodin, and many others.
The museum, which opened in 1929, was the first one in Japan to house a large collection of modern Western art.