Sesshiu, the remarkable painter who founded the school bearing his name, was of the noble family of Ota, and was born in 1440. At the age of twelve or thirteen he was intended for the Church and placed under the instruction of the abbot of the temple of Hōfukuji. Sesshiu’s sympathies, however, were all in the direction of the fine arts, he neglected religious training, and a story is told of him—one of those extraordinary legends familiar in Chinese and Japanese annals—that upon one occasion, when bound to a pillar as punishment for some misconduct, he beguiled the weary hours of waiting by drawing rats upon the floor, using his toes for pencil and his tears for ink (!), the representation being so life-like as to alarm his janitor. Some versions of the story affirm that, upon the approach of the priest, the rats scampered away. At the age of forty he visited China, the fountain-head, but was surprised to find that he had more to teach than to learn. The fan of Hotei and the children, probably by Kanō Shō-yei, 1591, may be accepted as one of the finest examples of a painted fan of the Kanō school, the last of the three branches of the fifteenth-century revival of Chinese teaching. The school was founded by Masanobu, a painter of landscape, born _c._ 1423 and died 1520, its actual head, however, being Motonobu, his son, born 1476. Hotei (Master Linen-sack), the god of prosperity, was a Chinese priest of the tenth century, famous for his fatness and his love of children. He could sleep in the snow, never washed himself, and had the power of infallibly predicting future events. The legends attached to his name are very similar to those narrated of many Taoist Rishis, but his claim to a position as Divinity appears to be due to the view enunciated in the _Butsu-Zō dzu-i_ and other works, that he was an incarnation of Miroku Bosatsu Mâitrêya, the Messiah of the Buddhists, in which capacity his image has long been worshipped in Chinese temples. He is usually represented with a fan of the pear-shaped gourd type, and carries a cloth bag as a trap for little boys and girls, who are enticed inside to see the wonderful things it is supposed to contain, and then imprisoned until they can beg their way out. These ‘Precious Things’ include the Lucky Rain Coat, the Sacred Key, the Inexhaustible Purse, etc.[51] Innumerable pictures of Hotei by Japanese artists are in existence, some dating from the fifteenth century. The charmingly poetic view of the Tamagawa River, with the tea-plant in blossom, and flying cuckoo (Hoto-Togisu), is probably by Kanō San Raku, 1633. Both these fans are accompanied by a Japanese certificate of authenticity.