If Yuzan’s work looks familiar, that’s because it represents quintessential traditional Japanese ... in temples and shrines, Edo period (1603-1868) paintings and even in Japanese-style tattoos.

Calves bulging and back rippling with sinewy muscles, Du Xing – a bandit in the Chinese martial arts novel “Water Margin” – moves towards a precipice. His arms are raised overhead ...

While largely beneath the contemporary-art radar, painting for Japanese temples by the stars of the postwar art world is a relatively common activity, though largely restricted to nihonga ...