(b Bitchu [now Okayama Prefect.], 1420; d 1506). Japanese Zen monk and painter.

Sesshu began his religious training as an acolyte attending to the eminent Zen master Shunrin Shuto (d 1463); he is known to have been in Kyoto by 1430. Records show him also to have been a disciple of the prominent monk Ryuko Shinkei ( fl c. 1433–62) at the Zen temple Shokokuji in Kyoto. Later in his career, Sesshu held the temple post of shika (official greeter of guests). He is considered one of the two most accomplished ink-painting (suibokuga) students of TENSHO SHUBUN, the official painter to the shogunate at Shokokuji. He later chose the characters of his go (art name) Sesshu to refer to JOSETSU, Shubun’s teacher, and to Shubun himself, in an effort to inscribe himself in this illustrious ink-painting lineage. After Shubun’s retirement or death in 1463, however, he was replaced by his other main disciple, OGURI SOTAN. In 1465, Sesshu left Kyoto and established a painting studio in Suo (now Yamaguchi Prefect.) Scholars have attributed Sesshu’s refusal of Shubun’s mantle and hasty departure to his anti-academic stance and his preference for an itinerant lifestyle. It is more likely that he left Kyoto because of the growing political fragmentation preceding the Onin War (1467–77), which led to the razing of the city and to a dissemination of Kyoto’s cosmopolitan culture, with the creation of ‘little Kyotos’, regional cultural centres supported by local lords (daimyo).

• Toyo Sesshu
  • Japan, §I, 5(ii)(a): Introduction: Status of the artist: Historical survey: 6th century ad–1600
  • Japan, §XVI, 20(i)(c): Authorship and thread seals
  • Kyoto, §II, 2: Art life, 13th–19th centuries
  • patrons and collectors
    • Hasegawa Tohaku, §1: Life
    • Japan, §XIX, 2: Patronage, 13th–16th centuries
    • Japan, §XXI, 1(i): Collectors and collections: Introduction
  • teachers
    • Tensho Shubun, §2: Work and influence
  • works
    • Ashikaga
    • Brushline
    • Buddhism, §III, 10(iv)(b): Japan: Zen
    • Japan, §I, 3(ii): Trade: Kamakura and Muromachi periods
    • Japan, §VI, 4(iii)(f): Ink painting in the Muromachi period: Shubun school and kaisho décor
    • Japan, §VI, 4(iii)(h): Ink painting in the Muromachi period: Toyo Sesshu & provincial courts
    • Japan, §XII, 2(v): Metalwork: Momoyama and Edo periods