Very little is known concerning Keiga KAWAHARA (1786- after 1860), a painter in Nagasaki, although he developed a unique Western-influenced repertory in painting there. Almost none of the considerable number of paintings he left are dated. Many of his works have his seal but few have his signature. His paintings can be classified into two categories. One is a group of works painted for foreigners and the other is a group of works for Japanese. The first group includes those made for J. C. BLOMHOFF (1779-1853), J. G. F. Van Overmeer FISSCHER (18001848) and P. F. Von SIEBOLT (1796-1866), at their request out of their political and academic interest. Keiga's works, in the Blomhoff-Fisscher Collection in the Rijks-museum voor Volkenkunde at Leiden, Netherlands, seem to have greatly contributed to the book on Japan written by Fisscher. The frontispiece of this book has a painting of an arrangement of several small pieces by Keiga. These small paintings are his copies Hokusai KATSUSHIKA'S wood-blockprinted book Hokusai Manga. Fisscher's description of typical Japanese life meets exactly with the scenes in a handscroll painting titled “Life of the Japanese”, which was presumably executed by Keiga. Koga Bikō, a Japanese book on old paintings compiled in mid-nineteenth century, contains a passage mentioning that Hokusai made a set of two illustrated handscrolls titled “Life of the Japanese” for a Dutchman. There must be some kind of a relationship between these works. The Rijks-museum voor Volkenkunde owns thirteen hanging scroll paintings by Keiga, four in the Siebold Collection and seven in the Blomhoff-Fisscher Collection. All thirteen scrolls have the artist's signature, an exceptional fact. These two collections are from different but successive periods. Therefore, they are useful materials for studying the development of Keiga's style, from 1817 to 1829. The works in these collections indicate that Keiga studied the methods of the Tosa-school-type of traditional Japanese painting and worked in the style of SHÊN Ch'üan, a Chinese painter who came to Nagasaki.