Toshi Yoshida

Toshi Yoshida (1911-1995) was one of the most successful Japanese woodblock artists of the 20th century. A member of the famous Yoshida family, he was the father of Tsukasa Yoshida and son of Fujio and Hiroshi Yoshida. He started drawing as a child and could learn painting and woodblock printmaking from his parents. His sheer talent was already visible in his early works and, supported by the knowledge of his father, he already managed to deliver remarkable woodblock prints from a young age. Throughout his life he experimented with different art forms and produced many works. These include abstract designs, children's books, paintings and many woodblock prints. Themes are varied and encompass nature, landscapes, temples and daily life, as well as his specialty of animal prints.

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Kawase Hasui

Kawase Hasui (1883-1957) has become one of the most popular woodblock print artists of our time. Already recognized as a world-class artist during his lifetime, his designs have aged well and have continued to capture successive generations. An advantage for current woodblock print enthusiasts is that the woodblocks for some of Kawase Hasui's designs have survived to this day and continue to be printed occasionally. In this way, the nature of the woodblock print medium has enabled Kawase Hasui to even posthumously drive the creation of new art pieces well into the 21st century. With this, Kawase Hasui's prints can very broadly be divided into two categories: earlier and recent editions. Prices for both have been steadily rising, but unsurprisingly it is the early editions that command the highest prices. Some of these designs are from before the 1923 earthquake, and have not been printed since, due to the loss of their original woodblocks in the disaster. Others were designed and printed afterwards, both during the lifetime of Kawase Hasui and posthumously. Depending on the design, time of printing, quality of the impression, state of the woodblocks at the time, prevalence of surviving prints, their state, and many other factors, such prints have been breaking records at auctions in recent years. The second broad category consists of recent editions. Though more affordable, there are unavoidable limits to their availability. Kawase Hasui's designs are challenging to print, requiring a highly skilled printer, and even then it takes significant time to complete all impressions. Only three publishers that worked with Kawase Hasui are still successfully printing his works, and all three hold a high standard, preferring higher-quality prints in more limited quantities over increases in numbers. Recent editions might be considered more suitable for display or collection in larger numbers, and earlier, especially lifetime editions, could be considered too rare for prolonged display. At nipponprints.com we offer both categories of Kawase Hasui prints for sale. In case you have Kawase Hasui prints you wish to sell, we are also interested in hearing from you. For further reading and a good overview of Kawase Hasui prints, the go-to work is Kendall Brown and Amy Reigle's Kawase Hasui: The Complete Woodblock Prints, published by Hotei. For more concise but more affordable works, we recommend Kendall Brown's Water and Shadow: Kawase Hasui and Japanese Landscape Prints or Visions of Japan: Kawase Hasui's Masterpieces.

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Hajime Namiki

Hajime Namiki (b. 1947) is a modern Japanese woodblock artist. Originally trained as a sculptor, he transitioned to woodblock printing in the late 1970s. He limits himself to a small number of themes, and within those he experiments and varies a tremendous amount. Among these themes, are trees scenes (varying from dogwood to pine trees), dragons and cherry blossoms.

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Tsuchiya Koitsu

Tsuchiya Koitsu (1870-1949) was a Japanese woodblock print artist, active in the 1930s and 1940s. He is considered to be part of the second generation of the Shin hanga artists, with the Shin hanga movement already well under way when he started designing woodblock prints. His recognition has grown during the past decades, and nowadays his prints are often compared to those of the likes of Hiroshi Yoshida and Kawase Hasui. Tsuchiya Koitsu was born on August 28, 1870 under the name of Tsuchiya Sahei. His parents were farmers, but at age fifteen, he moved to Tokyo to become a trainee at a temple. Upon the recommendation of a priest he soon transferred to an engraving studio. Through connections of the studio he joined Kobayashi Kiyochika's residence as a pupil, and became strongly tied to the household of Kobayashi Kiyochika. Here he acquired the name "Koitsu", specialized in lithographs and published his first prints. This lineage is significant in many ways. Kobayashi Kiyochika was a very accomplished ukiyo-e artist and a fore-runner for the later Shin hanga movement, even if he was not a part of it himself. He emphasized the role of lights and shadows and mood in his prints and is said to have exerted an influence on artists such as Kawase Hasui. Indeed, the interplay between light and shadow became an important part of Shin hanga woodblock prints and through his teacher, Tsuchiya Koitsu was well prepared to join the movement. Another enabler for his later Shin hanga prints was unfortunately bad luck for Tsuchiya Koitsu, who experienced many personal hardships. Among these were health problems, which caused him to abandon his lithographic activities. To sustain himself, he made drawings for hanging scrolls for export to China. Unfortunately, little is known about his works in this area. Later, in 1931, publisher Watanabe Shozaburo, the driving force behind Shin hanga, held an exhibition commemorating the death of Kobayashi Kiyochika and was in contact with Tsuchiya Koitsu. Watanabe asked him to make a few designs for woodblock prints, which Watanabe ended up appraising highly. Having entered the Shin hanga movement, Tsuchiya Koitsu went on to work with a multitude of woodblock print publishers, as was common at the time. The most important of these for him was without a doubt publisher Doi Hangaten, for whom Koitsu designed most of his woodblock prints. The president of Doi Hangaten, Doi Sadaichi, was committed to publishing high-quality woodblock prints and worked with excellent carvers and printers. Tsuchiya Koitsu mainly designed landscape prints there, and his work truly embodied the Shin hanga movement, excelling in the depiction of light and shadow, use of colors, expression of mood, and quality of printing, often requiring many woodblock impressions. Because he joined the Shin hanga movement relatively late, Tsuchiya Koitsu missed important exhibitions in the United States in 1930 and 1936. With the advent of the war export stopped almost completely, resulting in Tsuchiya Koitsu being less known abroad than one might expect based on his body of work. In the last decades a rediscovery has taken place however, and Tsuchiya Koitsu is now considered as one of the foremost Shin hanga artists.

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Nishijima Katsuyuki

Nishijima Katsuyuki (b. 1945) is a prolific and popular Japanese woodblock artist. He has been perfecting his art since half a century, working in the Sosaku Hanga (creative prints) style, and thus carving and printing all by himself. He has developed a completely unique style, making his prints recognizable from across the room. Common themes are country side landscapes and city scenes. Here, the scenes do not show people or modern tools, creating a timeless beauty, where, to an extent, it is possible to imagine oneself being in the present or a century earlier just as easily. Nishijima Katsuyuki signs his prints, but many of the designs are unnumbered. With many designs and possibly recurring editions for his unnumbered prints, it seems that it was possible for him to keep them relatively affordable.

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Katsushika Hokusai

Katsushika Hokusai (1760 - 1849) was one of the most famous Japanese woodblock artists. He became an artist at a young age, lived a long life, and kept working continuously, leading to a wide body of work of such high quality that he is considered to be among the greatest artists ever.

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Teruhide Kato

Teruhide Kato (1936-2015) was a modern Japanese woodblock artist. He attended the Kyoto Art College. After a successful career as a kimono designer, he became a woodblock artist. Here he used traditional themes in more abstract designs. Nipponprints has a wide range of his prints. Many of these depict famous places in or around Kyoto. Examples are the 1,000 Torii at Kyoto's Fushima Inari Shrine, Kinkaku-Ji, Kiyomizu-dera and Yasaka Shrine. Often these are combined with elements of nature, such as the full moon, bamboo, autumn leaves or cherry blossoms. In all, the innovative style of Teruhide Kato is unmistakable.

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Ito Yuhan

Ito Yuhan (1882-1951) was a Shin hanga artist who designed a series of woodblock prints in the 1930s for publisher Nishinomiya Yosaku. These prints are in unmistakable Shin hanga style and depict landscapes and famous Japanese places. That notwithstanding, within the Shin hanga movement, Ito Yuhan is an absolutely unique artist with an unforgettable style. This is best exemplified in his prints where the key-block was omitted during printing, even if it was used during the creation process of the woodblocks. As a result, the sharp black outlines that are present in other Shin hanga designs are missing, and combined with printing in soft tones and with many color gradients, the result is almost like watercolor paintings. There is some discussion within the Japanese woodblock print community as to when the Ito Yuhan woodblock prints were first made. We estimate that, as written above, the first editions were made in the 1930s, for two reasons. First of all, in H. Merritt and N. Yamada, "Guide to Modern Japanese Woodblock Prints: 1900-1975" (1995, p.48) it is written that Ito Yuhan was active in the 1930s. It is hard to imagine the first editions of the prints being made only 20 years later. Even if that did happen for some woodblock prints of other artists, those were always exceptions with many other prints being made closely after designing them. Of course, this relies on the assumption that H. Merritt and N. Yamada are correct, which we cannot further verify, but it is a very safe assumption to make. Secondly, there are copies of Ito Yuhan prints with the famous "Made in Japan" stamp on the back. Even if such a stamp does not provide an absolute guarantee that the print was created circa 1930s, it increases the likelihood a lot as the stamp is disproportionately found on prints from around the 1930s. Another question is then when later editions were printed. This is unfortunately hard to establish exactly. Even if it is possible to see the differences in editions, there are no good comparison prints available that are firmly established for a certain period. What complicates this further for some designs is the lack of use of a key-block. Normally it is at least somewhat possible to order Japanese woodblock prints chronologically by their printing period based on the degradation of the key-blocks visible in imperfections in subsequent editions. However, due to the absence of key-block lines in some designs, such an approach relying on block-degradation to date is less effective for some of the Ito Yuhan prints, even if still partially possible. In general, we provide a wide margin then for our estimations of the dates of Ito Yuhan woodblock prints. That said, discerning the various prints is all the more important in the case of Ito Yuhan since the differences are significant due to the printing with so many color gradients.

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