Toba Sojo & Shimoboku Ooka

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The history of manga is said to begin in the 11th century by a painter and priest of the name Toba Sojo.  His work consisted of animal scroll-paintings called choju-giga, and he equated a lot of the elements of his life-style to various animals and their actions.  After some time, Shimoboku Ooka created what was called Toba-e, or "Toba Pictures" which, in the 18th century style, were created in an accordion-book style and used little words for visual emphasis.  Katsushika Hokusai was also influential in the beginnings of manga as we know it today.  He lived in the 19th century and created was is called ukiyo-e, or "floating world pictures", and is mostly known for his woodblock prints called the 36 views of Mount Fuji.  However, he also called some of the work in his sketch books "manga", meaning "playful sketches", and while their original purpose was material for their students to copy, they were distributed across Japan.  Shunga, or "Spring Pictures", is an outrageous eroticism art style that helped to influence modern manga as well, though not as much as it influenced modern-day "hentai" and other explicit manga.  Another topic, yokai, influenced many of the more contemporary artists, such as Maruo Suehiro and Shigeru Mizuki, who detail and depict warriors committing seppuku and other graphic scenes of violence.  Manga today still shows strong evidence of political satire in its pages; for example, mocking the rich and powerful and many other elements of society.  Kibyoshi, or "Yellow Cover Books", were very popular in the 18th century and were banned off and on by the authorities.  Charles Wirgman and George Bigot, two foreign artists that also helped influence the modern East-West oriented manga of today, created Ponch-e and Toba-e magazine respectively, both widely accepted in Japan. This was a summary of the History of "manga" by Trevor Vardeman. Source:  http://manga.about.com/od/historyofmanga/a/mangahistory1.htm