Tosa Mitsunori (土佐光則, January 16, 1583 to March 1, 1638) was an illustrator from the

Tosa school of Japanese painting was founded in the early Muromachi period (14th–15th centuries),,p.988 and was devoted to ''yamato-e'', paintings specializing in subject matter and techniques derived from ancient Japanese art, as opposed to schools influ ...

of painting during the

Azuchi–Momoyama period The was the final phase of the in Japanese history from 1568 to 1600. After the outbreak of the Ōnin War in 1467, the power of the Ashikaga Shogunate effectively collapsed, marking the start of the chaotic Sengoku period. In 1568, Oda Nobuna ...

and the early

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteriz ...

. He was a son of Tosa Mitsuyoshi and the father of

Tosa Mitsuoki was a Japanese painter. Tosa Mitsuoki succeeded his father, Tosa Mitsunori (1583–1638), as head of the Tosa school and brought the Tosa school to Kyoto after around 50 years in Sakai. When the school was settled in Sakai, Mitsunori painted f ...

. Although having moved to

Sakai is a city located in Osaka Prefecture, Japan. It has been one of the largest and most important seaports of Japan since the medieval era. Sakai is known for its keyhole-shaped burial mounds, or kofun, which date from the fifth century and incl ...

in his youth, he sometimes presented painted fanss to the

Sentō Imperial Palace In Japan, the traditionally does not refer to a single location, but to any residence of retired emperors. Before Akihito abdicated in 2019, the last Emperor to retire did so in 1817, so the designation commonly refers to the historical . Kyot ...

, but he did not receive a position at the court. About the age of 52, in his later years, he returned to

Kyoto Kyoto (; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the ci ...

with his eldest son, Mitsuoki. Many small works with gold backgrounds using variegated paints kept up the tradition of the Tosa school and showed much skill in their delicacy of depiction and the combinations of colours. Among the few surviving works of Mitsunori is a scroll known as the “Legend of the

Taima mandala The Taima Mandala (當麻曼荼羅,綴織当麻曼荼羅図) is an 8th century mandala in Japanese Pure Land Buddhism. It depicts Sukhavati, the western Pure Land, with the Buddha Amitābha (Japanese: Amida) in the center. The original copy was ...

” (当麻曼荼羅図, ''Taimamandarazu''), executed in a quite conservative style.

Literature

* Tazawa, Yutaka: “Tosa Mitsunori” in ''Biographical Dictionary of Japanese Art.'' Kodansha, 825 pages, 1982. . * Laurance P. Roberts: “Mitsunori” in ''A Dictionary of Japanese Artists: Painting, Sculpture, Ceramics, Prints, Lacquer.'' Tuttle, 312 pages, 1976. . {{DEFAULTSORT:Tosa, Mitsunori 1583 births 1638 deaths People of Edo-period Japan 17th-century Japanese painters Izumi Province