Kichizan

Kichizan, pseudonym of Minchō, (born 1352, Awaji-shima, Japan—died Sept. 26, 1431, Japan), the last major professional painter of Buddhist iconography in Japan.

He was a priest, associated with the Zen Buddhist Tōfuku-ji (temple) in Kyōto. Of the Buddhist paintings that he did for the temple, the best known is the portrait of Shōichi (1202–80), founder of the temple. The painting is a chinsō, an official portrait of a high-ranking ecclesiastic in which emphasis is placed upon the realistic depiction of the face and the robes. It shows to good advantage the heavy curved outlines for which his painting style is famous. He is also believed to be the artist of the oldest ink landscape painting extant in Japan: “The Hut in the Valley” (dated 1413; located in the Konchi-in monastery in Kyōto). The painting reflects the influence of Chinese landscape art and is an early Japanese example of a shi-ga-jiku, hanging scroll on which poems commenting upon the painting are inscribed.