Shinoda Toko

Born in Dalian, Manchuria, in 1913 (registered domicile: Gifu Prefecture), Toko was transferred to Tokyo when her father was transferred, and has been raised there ever since. However, with her father from Gifu City and her grandmother from Seki City, Toko has longed for Gifu, a place she would visit from time to time since she was a child, and considered it her "spiritual home." Influenced by her father, she grew up surrounded by Gifu culture, decorating the house with Gifu lanterns for Obon and moon viewing, and ordering Mino paper and local foods. Toko grew up in a household that was familiar with calligraphy, Chinese poetry, and waka poetry, and she first picked up a brush at the age of six. At that time, her father gave her the pen name "Toko," which she would use for the rest of her life.

As she grew older, she studied calligraphy at a girls' school, but otherwise she taught herself calligraphy and became independent, earning a living by teaching it to students.
After the war, he began to work in earnest as an artist, moving towards his own unique form of abstract art that was not bound by traditional calligraphy forms.

At his first solo exhibition of calligraphy in Ginza, he was described as a "rootless artist" despite his aspirations for free expression. However, from around 1947 onwards, he began to produce a series of abstract works that were not bound by letters.

In 1956, at the age of 43, amid the "avant-garde calligraphy boom" in which artists were breaking away from the traditional framework and developing new approaches to calligraphy, he traveled to the United States alone and devoted himself to creative work in New York. He held solo exhibitions across the United States and Europe. His works garnered great attention and critical acclaim, and he established his own unique world. However, he realized that the dry climate of America was not suitable for ink painting, and returned to Japan.

After returning to Japan, he established his own unique style of abstract expression and spatial expression using ink, unconstrained by the dichotomy between calligraphy and painting, or between letters and images, and his wide-ranging activities, including the production of large-scale works such as murals for buildings and the sliding door paintings of the main hall of Zojoji Temple, as well as prints, calligraphy, and essays, were unmatched.

The intense expression of the 1950s gradually became more lyric, and from the 80s to the 90s, his lines began to form more refined spaces.
Shinoda has an atelier in Minami-Aoyama, Tokyo, and has always maintained a lifestyle in which she regularly wears traditional Japanese clothing, while maintaining her own world and continuing to produce high-quality works.

He was a solitary artist with a long life. He continued to paint abstract works using ink until his death at the age of 107.
His representative works are housed in art museums around the world. Film director Masahiro Shinoda is his cousin, and architect Shigeru Wakayama is his nephew.

Her dignified way of life and words have captured the hearts of many people, and her unique essays are also popular.　
Toko Shinoda explored her own unique style of expression without being bound by genres such as "calligraphy" or "art."

His modern and cutting-edge artistic expression continues to fascinate many people.