Junsaku Koizumi (1924–2012) was a Japanese painter. He studied Japanese painting under Kyujin Yamamoto at the Tokyo Fine Arts School, now Tokyo University of the Arts, and continued to paint while working in design and ceramics. From the 1980s onward, he devoted himself increasingly to ink painting and completed several monumental works late in life, including “Unryuzu” (“Cloud Dragon”) at Kenchoji Temple in Kamakura, “Soryuzu” (“Twin Dragons”) at Kenninji Temple in Kyoto, and a series of sliding-door paintings for Todaiji Temple in Nara. In his autobiography “Ware no Na wa Shirakansu: Sanokunen o Ikiru Mono Nari” (“My Name Is Coelacanth: A Creature That Has Lived for Three Hundred Million Years”), he recalls the decades of uncertainty that preceded his major commissions and his decision to undertake vast temple paintings after the age of seventy.
