Artists

Popular Artists

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

All Artists

Arai Yoshimune

Ayaoka Yushin

Ayaoka Yushin (1846 - 1910) is an artist about whom little is known, besides the artworks left to us. He was a painter, a woodblock artist, and a student of Shibata Zeshin. His prints are grounded in the Ukiyo-e school, even though he was active late in the 19th century. Though the prints were clearly successful artistically, we speculate that not many were printed, as they are only rarely encountered in the market.

Eiichi Kotozuka

Eiichi Kotozuka (1906 - 1981) was a Japanese woodblock print artist, working in the Sosaku-hanga style. He depicted traditional woodblock print themes, such as flowers and landscapes, but also made interesting prints of Japanese cultural traditions.

Eijiro Kobayashi

Eijiro Kobayashi (1870-1946) was a Japanese woodblock print artist who was active in the first half of the 20th century. Little is known about his life, but his art is well known due to the great success of a series of night scene prints.

Elizabeth Eaton Burton

Elizabeth Eaton Burton (1869–1937) was a versatile artist associated with the Arts and Crafts movement. Born and raised in France, she later lived in California for many years, before returning to France. While traveling through China and Japan from 1933 onward, she produced six woodblock print designs. As these were exhibited during 1935 and 1936, they must have been finished somewhere in the 1933–1935 period. Reportedly it was the Tokyo-based publisher Kato Junji that published the woodblock prints based on the paintings. Known for publishing a series of 12 woodblock prints by Kawase Hasui, Kato Junji was more than capable of such an endeavor and clearly managed to transfer Elizabeth Eaton Burton's style very well. The cooperation with artists from different fields and countries during the Shin Hanga period always led to interesting results. An Elizabeth Eaton Burton print like Women with Parasols on Bridge will remind some of Lilian May Miller's Rain Blossom, and one like Quan Yin of Bertha Lum's The Spirit of the Sea. Taken together, however, these six designs stand largely on their own within the Shin Hanga movement, serving as great, even if less widely known, enrichment of it.

Fu Takenaka

Fu Takenaka (1945 – 2022) was a successful woodblock print artist. She had a background in design, fashion and fabric, and transitioned to woodblock printing later in life. Her favorite themes were temples in and around Kyoto and owls. She depicted these in a dreamlike style, very distinct from other Japanese woodblock print artists. Fu Takenaka collaborated with the Kyoto based woodblock print publisher Unsodo, but designed, carved and printed the works herself, from start to finish. They were published in limited editions, hand-signed and numbered in pencil. Since her passing Unsodo has started to complete her limited editions. Currently we have both the first of these as well as a number of remaining life-time editions on offer.

Fukita Fumiaki

Fukita Fumiaki (b. 1926) is a successful Japanese woodblock artist. He often used hard wood for his prints, which helped him to create much larger then usual prints. His subjects where innovative as well, and he pioneered scenes depicting stars, galaxies and light effects.

Gekko Ogata

Gekko Ogata (1859 – 1920) was a self-taught Japanese painter and woodblock artist. He was a prolific artist with a strong work ethic and produced many paintings, woodblock prints, and illustrations for various media. In later years, attention to his works was less than for artists such as Tsukioka Yoshitoshi or Yoshu Chikanobu, but in recent years there has been renewed interest. For an in-depth overview of his life and work, there is an excellent resource in Amy Reigle Newland's "Printed and Painted. The Meiji Art of Ogata Gekko (1859-1920)". His works feature traditional ukiyo-e themes, such as flowers and beautiful women. These prints are typically relatively affordable. Another, more expensive genre, is that of Japanese legends, heroes, and history. For both these genres, we have many woodblock prints on offer, and we hope to add more in the future of his landscape prints and those of other genres.

Gesso Yoshimoto

Gyosui Suzuki

Hajime Namiki

Hiroshi Yoshida

Hiroshi Yoshida (1876 - 1950) was one of the leading figures of Japanese printmaking in the 20th century. Together with Kawase Hasui he is the most famous artist of the Japanese Shin-hanga movement that revived Japanese woodblock printing to new heights. A prolific artist, Hiroshi Yoshida traveled the world and produced landscape prints of many different countries.

Hiroshige

Utagawa Hiroshige (1797 - 1858) was one of the most famous Japanese woodblock print artists, considered the last great ukiyo-e master. He has had a lasting impact on both Japanese print artists as well as on Western painters such as Van Gogh and Monet and his prints are still widely admired to this day.

Ide Gakusui

Imao Keinen

Ishikawa Toraji

Ishiwata Koitsu

Ito Nisaburo

Ito Sozan

Ito Yuhan

Joichi Hoshi

Junichi Mibugawa

Junichi Mibugawa (b. 1973) is a modern Japanese woodblock print artist, working in a very distinct and novel style. It seems that the woodblocks are not carved to microscopic detail, but that by using superb printing technique he is able to create very lively imagery. Remotely analogous to pointillistic art, it seems that the prints of Junichi Mibugawa leave it to the mind of the viewer to automatically combine into vivid imagery the various easily discernible parts from up close. One of Junichi Mibugawa’s strongest point is his ability to capture the nuances of light, especially apparent in the prints where he shows trees casting their shadows. This extends to being able to capture the differences in light between the various seasons, as for example shown in his print Sunlight in Winter, that could not depict any other season. This style is very successful in displaying the countryside, woods and temples in nature. Though there is no Japanese woodblock print artist that is truly close in style, the prints of Maeda Koichi do share the countryside theme often, and with that also the use of many shades of green. Junichi Mibugawa has been very active recently, and we look forward to seeing the future work of such a unique artist. Whenever new prints of him become available, we will offer them here.

Junichiro Sekino

Kamisaka Sekka

Kasamatsu Shiro

Kasamatsu Shiro (1898-1991) was a prolific and famous woodblock artist. When only aged thirteen he started as an apprentice. He could trace part of his artistic lineage back via Kaburagi and Yoshitoshi, connecting him to the great Ukiyo-e masters of the 19th century. He created many prints in the Shin-Hanga style. Many of these depicted traditional themes like landscapes and temples, but within that Shiro displayed great diversity. His prints in the period of 1952-1960 in this style were very successful. This enabled him to experiment and he started working in the Sōsaku-Hanga (creative prints) movement as well, not only designing but also carving and printing himself.

Katsuhira Tokushi

Katsushika Hokusai

Kawanabe Kyosai

Kawanabe Kyosai (1831 - 1889) was a 19th century Japanese painter.

Kawarazaki Shodo

Kawarazaki Shodo (1889-1973) was a painter and woodblock artist. He designed many flower prints for publisher Unsodo, that are still popular today.

Kawase Hasui

Kitano Tsunetomi

Kitano Tsunetomi (1880 - 1947) was a painter and printmaker who specialized in the genre of beautiful woman (Bijin-ga).

Kobayashi Kiyochika

Kogyo Tsukioka

Koho Shoda

Koho Shoda (1871 - 1946) was a Japanese woodblock print artist. His prints exemplified the spirit of the Shin-hanga movement and are widely sought after to this day.

Koichi Maeda

Koichi Maeda (b. 1936) is a Japanese woodblock artist with enormous experience. Already in 1961, at the age of 25, his works were exhibited through the Japan Print Association. His early works, now rare to find, are reminiscent of impressionistic art, but his later works became more naturalistic. Still, his art is very atmospheric and echoes the nature of the woodblock prints of Kawase Hasui. His landscapes bring serenity and take the viewer to beautiful and calm places. Koichi Maeda hand-signs his prints, and they are numbered, typically in editions of 80. Pricing ranges from about 200E to 500E, depending on the design.

Koichi Okada

Okada Koichi is known for his series of woodblock prints “Twelve views of Japan”, created around the year 1950. The series might have been intended to consist of twelve different prints, but only six are known. They depict the mount Fuji seen from Hakone, Lake Kawaguchi, Lake Ashinoko, Hagoromo and overlooking Nihondaira. All these have been printed using the original woodblocks by Unsodo, the same publisher that published the first editions.

Koizumi Kishio

Koizumi Kishio (1893–1945) is renowned as the creator of the print series One Hundred Pictures of Great Tokyo in the Showa Era. Created between 1928 and 1940, the series chronicles Tokyo in the years leading up to the war, and its prints remain widely sought after. As a member of the Sosaku Hanga movement, Koizumi carved and printed his woodblocks himself, working in a distinctive style that has retained its artistic appeal. After completing One Hundred Pictures of Great Tokyo in the Showa Era, Koizumi began the series Thirty-six Views of the Sacred Peak of Mount Fuji. Although it was intended to comprise 36 designs, only 23 were finished. He became ill during the final years of the war, after being forced to evacuate Tokyo, and passed away in 1945.

Koyo Omura

Koyo Omura (1891–1983) is one of the few Japanese painters who were active for the Kyoto publisher Kyoto Hanga-in shortly after the war. These artists produced a number of woodblock prints in the Shin Hanga style, but with a far more painterly atmosphere than usual. Well known among these is Eiichi Kotozuka, but as Koyo Omura produced only a very limited number of designs, in what must have been relatively small editions, his works are seen much more rarely.

Kunio Kaneko

Man Zhuang

Nagamachi Chikuseki

Nagamachi Chikuseki (1757 - 1806) was a Japanese painter. In the early 20th century, woodblock print publisher Daikokuya published a number of woodblock prints based on his designs. The true artistic background of these designs is sometimes obscured by a now widely repeated, mistake in naming, whereby instead of the correct Nagamachi Chikuseki, the incorrect Hirose Chikuseki was used.

Nakazawa Hiromitsu

Nishida Tadashige

Nishida Tadashige (b. 1942) is a famous Japanese woodblock print artist. His cat prints is what he is best known for, of which you can find many below. These are all high quality woodblock prints, hand-signed by the artist in limited editions. Though subjective, the cat prints are often considered remarkable in the way they succeed in conveying the different moods and characters of the cats shown.

Nishijima Katsuyuki

Nishiyama Suisho

Noda Kyuho

Noel Nouet

Oda Kazuma

Oda Kazuma (1882 - 1956) was a Japanese print artist and researcher, active from the end of the 19th century. He started with lithographs, but also learned painting and woodblock printing. He became a prominent member of the Sosaku-hanga movement. His activities within the Shin-hanga were more limited, resulting only in six designs. These were published by Watanabe and very successful, but published only in low numbers.

Ohara Koson

Ohno Bakufu

Ohtsu Kazuyuki

Okada Saburosuke

Ono Shigeyuki

Ono Shigeyuki (fl. 1930s) was a Japanese woodblock print artist about whose life very little is known. Unless further research uncovers more, all we know about him comes from only a couple of woodblock print designs made circa the 1930s. Based on these, it is likely that he was a painter who was later asked by the publisher Nishinomiya to design a number of prints. These turned out to be similar in style to those of Gesso Yoshimoto, who was active for the same publisher. The designs are all quite different but share the theme of endearing birds in nature, often surrounded by flowers.

Paul Binnie

Rakusan Tsuchiya

Shimazaki Ryuu

Shoichi Kitamura

Soseki Komori

Suga Tatehiko

Sugiyama Mototsugu

Suzuki Kason

Suzuki Kason (1860–1919) was an accomplished Japanese painter, who designed a limited number of woodblock prints.

Takahashi Shotei

Takeji Asano

Takeji Asano(1900-1999) combines several of the typical activities of 20th century woodblock artists. He was trained at art schools in Kyoto and started out with oil painting. He then transitioned to woodblock printing within the Sōsaku-hanga (creative prints) movement. As such, he created prints from start to finish, drawing, carving and printing them himself. In the 1950 he switched to the process used by the Shin-hanga (new prints) movement which adhered to the division of labor used by traditional ukiyo-e artists. For these prints he only drew and cooperated with carver, printer and publisher to achieve the final result. Later on he turned to a more individualistic and novel style and kept creating until the very last years of his long life.

Teruhide Kato

Toshi Yoshida

Tsuchiya Koitsu

Tsukasa Yoshida

Tsukasa Yoshida (b. 1949) is a modern Japanese woodblock artist. He hails from the famous Yoshida art family and is the son of Toshi Yoshida and grandson of Hiroshi Yoshida. Not easily discernible from his ancestors in talent and art-form, but with a style very much his own. He is a master of land- and moonscapes. These prints display nature, often with no or only a few human elements and create very strong atmospheres. Another common theme are prints of cats. Next to these more classic print themes, he makes innovative abstract works.

Uehara Konen

Uemura Shoen

Yamamoto Hiromu

Yamamura Koka

Yamamura Koka (1885-1942) started as a painter but was noticed by famous woodblock print publisher Watanabe Shozaburo, who then published a number of prints of Yamamura Koka’s designs. After this more prints of Yamamura Koka were published by a society specifically created for this purpose by a group of supporters, or self-published with support by the society. Yamamura Koka excelled at portraits and his prints in this genre are among some of the best of the Shin-hanga movement.

Yosaku Sekino

Yoshijiro Urushibara

Yoshimoto Masao

Yoshitoshi Tsukioka

Yoshitoshi Tsukioka (1839 - 1892) was a Japanese woodblock print artist. He worked in a time when modern techniques like photography where diminishing the importance of woodblock prints as a medium, but kept innovating and helped to succeed in keeping woodblock printing alive. While doing this, he produced some of the best prints of his era. His most well known series are One Hundred Aspects of the Moon and New Forms of Thirty-Six Ghosts.

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