Chōjū-giga

Chōjū-jinbutsu-giga (鳥獣人物戯画^?, lit. "Animal-person Caricatures"), commonly shortened to Chōjū-giga (鳥獣戯画^?, lit. "Animal Caricatures") is a famous set of four picture scrolls, or emakimono, belonging to Kōzan-ji temple in Kyoto, Japan.

The Chōjū-giga scrolls are also referred to as Scrolls of Frolicking Animals and Scrolls of Frolicking Animals and Humans in English.

Some think that Toba Sōjō created the scrolls, however it is hard to verify this. The right-to-left reading direction of Chōjū-jinbutsu-giga is still a standard method seen in modern manga and novels in Japan.

Chōjū-jinbutsu-giga is also credited as the oldest work of manga.

The scrolls are now entrusted to the Kyoto National Museum and Tokyo National Museum.

As opened, the first scroll illustrates anthropomorphic rabbits and monkeys bathing and getting ready for a ceremony, a monkey thief runs from animals with sticks and knocks over a frog from the lively ceremony. Further on, the rabbits and monkeys are playing and wrestling while another group of animals participate in a funeral and frog prays to Buddha as the scroll closes.

Four publications based on Chōjū-jinbutsu-giga have been released by the publisher Geijutsuhiroba.

Although Chōjū-jinbutsu-giga is sometimes credited as the first manga,^[1] there has been some disputes with the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper. Seiki Hosokibara pointed to the Shigisan-engi scrolls as the first manga, and Kanta Ishida explained that the scrolls should be treated as masterpieces in their own right.