(1053–1140), also known as for his priesthood, was a Japanese

artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse refers to a practitioner in the visual arts only. However, th ...

monk A monk (, from el, μοναχός, ''monachos'', "single, solitary" via Latin ) is a person who practices religious asceticism by monastic living, either alone or with any number of other monks. A monk may be a person who decides to dedic ...

, and the son of

Minamoto no Takakuni (1004–1077), also known as , was a noble and a scholar of ancient Japan. He was also the father of Toba Sōjō, an important painter. Takakuni was also mentioned as Dainagon of Uji in "gleanings from ''Uji Dainagon Monogatari''" - a collectio ...

. Kakuyū was a high priest of

Tendai , also known as the Tendai Lotus School (天台法華宗 ''Tendai hokke shū,'' sometimes just "''hokke shū''") is a Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition (with significant esoteric elements) officially established in Japan in 806 by the Japanese m ...

Buddhism. He was advanced to in 1132 and then in 1134. In 1138, he became the 48th (the chief of the Tendai school). He is commonly known as Toba Sōjō, because he lived in , a temple funded by the imperial family and located at Toba,

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 c ...

. Kakuyū was also an artist proficient in both Buddhism art and satirical cartoon and his work (confirmed to be authentic) includes Fudōmyō'ō-ritsuzō at

Daigo-ji is a Shingon Buddhist temple in Fushimi-ku, Kyoto, Japan. Its main devotion ('' honzon'') is Yakushi. ''Daigo'', literally "ghee", is used figuratively to mean " crème de la crème" and is a metaphor of the most profound part of Buddhist thoug ...

, an Important Cultural Property of Japan.

Kokushi Daijiten The ''Kokushi Daijiten'' (国史大辞典 literally "Great Dictionary of National History") all no.: REF DS 833 .K64, (Vol. 1)is a large, general history dictionary of Japan published by the Tokyo-based company Yoshikawa Kobunkan. The original ...

- Kakuyū Perhaps the most famous one is the picture scroll Chōjū-giga, a National Treasure of Japan and one of the earliest

manga Manga ( Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is ...

—however, this attribution has no proof and may be spurious. His works are held in the permanent collections of the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

and the

University of Michigan Museum of Art The University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor, Michigan with is one of the largest university art museums in the United States. Built as a war memorial in 1909 for the university's fallen alumni from the Civil War, Alumni Memorial Hall ori ...

References

Kōjien is a single-volume Japanese dictionary first published by Iwanami Shoten in 1955. It is widely regarded as the most authoritative dictionary of Japanese, and newspaper editorials frequently cite its definitions. As of 2007, it had sold 11 mil ...

, 6th edition. 1053 births 1140 deaths Japanese religious leaders Japanese cartoonists Japanese Buddhist clergy Tendai Japanese Buddhists 12th-century Buddhists 12th-century Buddhist monks 12th-century Japanese painters Buddhist monks {{Japan-bio-stub