Moon amid Clouds early 19th century Inscription by Seisetsu Shcho A gibbous moon, rendered in reserve, shines through a bank of ink-wash clouds, which seem to gnaw at the edges of the lunar orb—almost abstract in conception. The painting, profoundly Zen in its minimalism and mysterious expressiveness, is unsigned so the only clue we have about the identity of who brushed it is the double-seal reading “Gekij” . Here the phrase on the seal derives from the four-character saying Kofuku gekij , meaning, literally, “to pat one’s belly and stamp the ground,” which is a roundabout way of expressing the blissful feeling of “everything in the world is at peace.”We have yet to identify the artist who used this seal, though during the time the Rinzai monk-calligrapher Seisetsu Shcho was active there was a Nanga artist named ta Gekijshi, who lived in Komatsushima on Shikoku island, coincidentally, perhaps, not far from where Seisetsu was born. Though at this point it remains compl