A hanging scroll with a literary inscription written above an ink painting. This format is a visual extension of the ancient Chinese belief that painting and poetry are one. In Japan, shigajiku developed in the cultural atmosphere of the Five Mountain Temples gozan 五山 associated with Zen 禅 Buddhism in Kyoto during the Kamakura period. A famous example is the scroll Hyōnen-zu 瓢鮎図 (Catching a Catfish with a Gourd) in the Taizōin 退蔵院 (a sub-temple of Myōshinji 妙心寺, Kyoto) by the Zen priest Josetsu 如拙 (fl. 1386?-1428?), which includes the verses of many Zen priests inscribed above the painting. There are many such extant paintings from the early Muromachi period that have literary inscriptions by Zen priests, many attributed to Shūbun 周文 (fl. 1414-63), an artist who successfully assimilated the Southern Song Imperial Academy style of painting nansō intaiga 南宋院体画 first introduced to Japan by Josetsu.
Closely associated with shigajiku are shosaijiku 書斎軸 (see *shosai-zu 書斎図) paintings with poems which depict monks studying in reclusive hermitages, and sōbetsujiku 送別軸, poem-and-painting scrolls expressing the sadness of separation and presented to friends of family when leaving for a hermitage. With Sesshū 雪舟 (1420-1506), a priest-painter who traveled to China himself and painted the natural landscapes that he experienced, ink painting became removed from the Zen monastery and literature and established itself as an independent genre.