The largest school of Chinese-style painting in Japanese art history. Spanning about 400 years from the late Muromachi period to the beginning of the Meiji period, and played a major role in the history of painting. Its founder was Kano Masanobu, chief painter of the Muromachi shogunate. The school would later produce such excellent painters as Kano Motonobu and Kano Eitoku, and came to hold supremacy in painting circles. In the Edo period, the Edo Kano school which included artists such as Kano Tanyu. For generations, the school came to grant its painters guaranteed status as chief painters of the shogunate.