Tosa Mitsunobu's Ko-E: Forms and Functions of Small-Format Handscrolls in the Muromachi Period (1333-1573)

This study reconceptualizes the relationship between the formats and functions of illustrated narrative handscrolls in premodern Japan by examining a group of miniature scrolls that peaked in popularity during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Referred to as ko-e (literally "small pictures") by medieval diarists, these scrolls measure approximately fifteen centimeters in height and usually consist of a single scroll. Ko-e thus differ dramatically from most handscrolls of this period, which frequently measure twice this height and often consist of multiple scrolls sets. Although a hypothesized juvenile audience for ko-e has traditionally explained their diminutive size, this dissertation posits broader cultural connections between the rise of the small format and other Muromachi-period forms of art and literature. Separate chapters on three small scrolls by Tosa Mitsunobu (act. ca. 1462-1521) demonstrate that he and his collaborators viewed the small format as a narrative space suitable for the blending of literary and pictorial genres. The works under discussion, Breaking the Inkstone (Suzuriwari soshi), Brief Slumbers (Utatane soshi ), and The Jizo Hall (Jizodo soshi), interweave a didactic tale with features of popular acolyte tales, a courtly romance with allusions to miraculous stories of the bodhisattva Kannon, and a story of Buddhist rebirth with elements of a famous folk tale about the Dragon Palace. This mixing of genres, however, derived from the needs of particular viewers and the social context of each scroll's production, as research into the historical circumstances of their intended audiences illustrates. With fewer and narrower painting frames, the small-format handscroll proposed a new type of pictorial space for which Mitsunobu created a highly economical but richly intertextual visual language. Tosa Mitsunobu's ko-e represent a significant but previously neglected aspect of the painter's oeuvre that illuminate a crucial phase of Muromachi cultural practice in aristocratic and warrior circles. Small scrolls also constitute an important chapter in the ongoing development of the Japanese handscroll format and speak eloquently of the complex relationships that these scrolls mediated between image and text, artist and patron, the depicted object and the viewing subject.