Tenshō Shūbun

Tenshō Shūbun (died c. 1444 to 1450) was a Japanese Zen Buddhist monk and painter of the Muromachi Period.

Shūbun was born in the late 14th century in Ōmi Province and became a professional painter around 1403. He settled in Kyoto. Shūbun is considered to be the founder of the Chinese style of suiboku ink painting in Japan. He was influenced by Chinese landscape painters Xia Gui and Ma Yuan. He became director of the court painting bureau, established by Ashikaga shoguns, which consisted of influential art patrons.

Throughout his life, Shūbun was associated with the Zen Buddhist temple, Shōkoku-ji. Early in his career, he studied painting there under Josetsu, a Chinese immigrant who became the father of the new Japanese ink painting tradition. Under Josetsu’s influence, Shūbun started studying Chinese Song Dynasty painting by masters such as Xia Gui and Ma Yuan; consequently, Shūbun’s style was an intermediate step between early Japanese artists who closely imitated Chinese painting, and later artists, who developed a national style. Later in life, Shūbun became overseer of buildings and grounds at Shōkoku-ji.

In the 1440s he taught Sesshū Tōyō, who became the most highly regarded Japanese artist of his time. Another important pupil may have been Kanō Masanobu, who succeeded Shūbun as the chief painter of the Ashikaga shogunate and founded the Kanō school of painting.

Shūbun’s most well-known painting is Reading in a Bamboo Grove, now kept in the Tokyo National Museum. The same museum houses a few other works attributed to Shūbun, among them a pair of folding screens (byōbu) titled Landscape of Four Seasons. As with many Japanese artists of this and earlier periods, many works survive that are attributed to Shūbun, but there are only a few that the consensus of art opinion believes that are truly his. Contemporary accounts describe Shūbun as a very versatile artist, yet the only extant works with the authorship issue resolved are landscapes.