Sugawara Michizane crossing to China (Toto Tenjin)

Sugawara Michizane Crossing to China (Toto Tenjin), dating to the 1770s, is a hosoban sumizuri-e (black-line monochrome) woodblock print held by the Art Institute of Chicago. The Toto Tenjin ("Tenjin going to Tang China") iconography belongs to a distinct Zen-influenced devotional tradition in which the deified poet Sugawara no Michizane is portrayed making a miraculous spiritual pilgrimage across the sea to receive instruction from the Chinese Chan master Wuzhun Shifan. The image was widely produced as a Zen ink painting subject from the late medieval period onward and was adopted by the Buddhist establishment as a way of associating Michizane, the patron god of learning, with Zen lineage authority. Shigemasa's sumizuri-e treatment - a single-block black-line print without color - explicitly evokes the Zen ink-painting precedent, signaling that this work belongs to the devotional rather than the floating-world side of his practice. Shigemasa, who taught calligraphy and was steeped in the literary tradition, would have known the iconography intimately. The Art Institute of Chicago's impression preserves a striking example of his rare sumizuri-e production.