Kamisaka Sekka (1866–1942) was a pivotal figure in modern Japanese art and design, widely regarded as the last great master of the Rinpa tradition. Born to a Kyoto samurai family, he trained in classical nihonga before the Japanese government sent him to Glasgow in 1901, where Art Nouveau profoundly shaped his sensibility.

Returning home, Sekka renewed the centuries-old Rinpa style with bold colour, flattened pattern and inventive composition, most famously in his print suite Momoyogusa (A World of Things). Carrying his designs across painting, woodblock, lacquer, ceramics and textiles, he became a progenitor of modern Japanese design whose influence endures across contemporary visual culture.