Oishi Jyunkyo 大石順教

大石順教 Oishi Jyunkyo (1888-1968)
Former geiko of Horie, Osaka, Japanese painter, and nun of the Yamashina school of Shingon Buddhism. Born in Osaka City. Her real name is Oishi Yoneko. She was adopted soon after her birth and studied the Yamamura school at an early age. She became a geiko at a teahouse in Horie, took the name “Tsumayoshi,” and became the adopted daughter of the owner, Nakagawa Manjiro. There she devoted herself to dancing, but in 1905 her adoptive father, Manjiro, killed and wounded six people in the house because of an illicit love affair with his common-law wife. Tsumayoshi was caught up in the incident and survived, although both of her arms were amputated. At a ryokan in Sendai, where she was on a tour, she saw a canary feeding its chicks with its beak, which inspired her to master the technique of writing with her mouth. After earning a living by painting chintz pictures in Shibuya, Tokyo, she built a hermitage in Takayasu, Osaka in 1931 to become a nun, and built an asylum for women and girls to educate them. In 1933, she was ordained at Kongobuji Temple on Koyasan, and changed her name to Junkyo. In 1955, her oral transcriptions of sutras were selected for the Nitten exhibition, and she continued to pursue calligraphy and painting until her later years.