Toba Sōjō

Toba Sōjō (born 1053, Japan—died 1140, Japan) was the 47th head priest of the Enryaku-ji, which is the headquarters of the Tendai sect of Buddhism, near Kyōto in modern Shiga Prefecture.

Toba is traditionally regarded as the artist of a series of important narrative scrolls featuring humorous secular subjects: “History of Mount Shigi” and “Scrolls of Frolicking Animals.” The “History of Mount Shigi” consists of illustrations of miracles and is notable for its lifelike crowds of people in action. In the “Scrolls of Frolicking Animals” the artist used a new technique of free-line ink drawing against a white background to depict the frolicking animals, which, some say, were caricatures of contemporary Buddhist priests. Because the four “Scrolls of Frolicking Animals” differ greatly in quality, it is now believed they were painted by Toba Sōjō and another, later artist. Despite doubts concerning their authorship, the caricature drawings are so closely associated with the Abbot that the appellation Toba-e (“Toba paintings”) is given to similar, although cruder, cartoon drawings popular during the Tokugawa period (1603–1867).