(b Manshu, Manchuria, 28 March 1913). Japanese calligrapher and painter of Manchurian birth. She learnt calligraphy from her father from 1930 to 1945. In 1940 she held her first one-woman exhibition at the Kyukyodo Gallery in Tokyo. From c. 1945 she began the production of abstract paintings using sumi (ink). In 1954 she exhibited at the exhibition of Japanese Calligraphy at MOMA, New York. In the same year she produced mural calligraphy for the Japanese pavilion at the celebrations of the 400th anniversary of the city of São Paulo. In 1955 she exhibited at the Nichi-Bei chusho bijutsuten (exhibition of Japanese and American abstract art) at the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, and at the Sumi no geijutsuten (exhibition of sumi art) which toured Europe in 1955–6. From 1956 she held numerous one-woman exhibitions in Europe and North America, and in 1961 she was invited to exhibit work at the 6th São Paulo Biennial. The following year she created a relief mural for the lobby of the Kyoto International Conference Hall, and in 1974 she made another mural for the main hall of the temple Zojoji in Tokyo. In 1979 she received the Japanese Essayist Club Prize for her collection of writings, Sumi-iro. She took part in the American travelling exhibition Okada, Shinoda, Tsutaka: Three Pioneers of Abstract Painting in Twentieth-Century Japan (1979–80).

• Shinoda, Toko
  • Japan, §VII, 2(vii)(b): Modern calligraphy: Masters and principal groups of the 19th–20th centuries
  • Showa period