A painting unique to the Orient in which subjects are depicted only with the shade of a single black ink. Ink painting expresses even colors by shading of ink, and various brush-and-ink techniques have been developed. It sublimated from the naturalistic expression to the expression of the spiritual thing, and it produced many masterpieces with the prosody. Born in the period of the Tang Dynasty in China, it was introduced to Korea and Japan, where it developed independently. It was introduced to Japan in the Kamakura period (1185-1333), developed mainly in the Zen temples in the Muromachi period (1336-1573), and became a representative painting of this period as the Japanese ink painting.