Artists

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, without exception, continued to capture successive generations.

Kasamatsu Shiro

笠松 紫浪

Kasamatsu Shiro (1898-1991) was a prolific and celebrated woodblock artist. At only thirteen he started as an apprentice. He could trace part of his artistic lineage back through 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 this style during the period 1952–1960 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.

Toshi Yoshida

吉田 遠志

Toshi Yoshida (1911–1995) was one of the most successful Japanese woodblock artists of the 20th century. A member of the Yoshida family, he was the father of Tsukasa Yoshida and son of Fujio and Hiroshi Yoshida. He started drawing as a child and was able to learn painting and woodblock printmaking from his parents. His early works already demonstrated considerable ability and he was producing accomplished 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 woodblock prints. Themes are varied and encompass nature, landscapes, temples and daily life, as well as his specialty of animal prints.

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 tree scenes (varying from dogwood to pine trees), dragons and cherry blossoms.

Koichi Maeda

Koichi Maeda (b. 1936) is a Japanese woodblock print artist with extensive experience. Already in 1961, at the age of 25, his works were exhibited through the Japan Print Association. His early works, now rarely found, are reminiscent of impressionistic art, but his later works became more naturalistic. His work remains deeply atmospheric and echoes the woodblock prints of Kawase Hasui, with his landscape prints often searching for a serenity and timelessness. Koichi Maeda hand-signs his prints, and they are numbered, typically in editions of 80.

Nishijima Katsuyuki

Nishijima Katsuyuki (b. 1945) is a prolific and popular Japanese woodblock print artist. He has been perfecting his art for half a century, working in the Sosaku-hanga style, and thus carving and printing entirely by himself. He has developed a distinctive style, making his prints recognizable from across the room. Common themes are countryside landscapes and city scenes. Here, the scenes do not show people or modern tools, evoking a sense of calm timelessness, where it is possible to imagine oneself being in the present or a century earlier just as easily.

Hiroshi Yoshida

吉田 博

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.

Tsuchiya Koitsu

土屋光逸

Tsuchiya Koitsu (1870–1949) was a Japanese woodblock print artist. He is known for his high-quality Shin-hanga prints, excelling in the depiction of light and shadow and the expression of mood.

Ohara Koson

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 the woodblock prints of Ito Yuhan stand out due to their unique style. This is best exemplified in his prints where the key-block was omitted during printing, even though 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 resulting prints look almost like watercolor paintings.

Noel Nouet

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.

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 and on Western painters such as Van Gogh and Monet, and his prints are still widely admired to this day.

Gekko Ogata

尾形月耕

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.

Takahashi Shotei

高橋松亭

Eijiro Kobayashi

小林英二郎

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.

Gesso Yoshimoto

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 completed editions as well as a number of remaining lifetime editions on offer.

Tsukasa Yoshida

Tsukasa Yoshida (b. 1949) is a contemporary Japanese woodblock print artist. He hails from the famous Yoshida art family and is the son of Toshi Yoshida and grandson of Hiroshi Yoshida. While comparable to his ancestors in talent and art form, he has developed a style very much his own. His prints often display night or autumn scenes, often with no human elements or only a few, and inviting contemplation. Alongside these more traditional print themes, he also produces innovative abstract works.

Teruhide Kato

Teruhide Kato (1936–2015) was a modern Japanese woodblock print 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. Many of his prints depict famous places in or around Kyoto. Examples include the 1,000 Torii at Kyoto's Fushimi Inari shrine, Kinkaku-ji temple, Kiyomizu-dera temple, 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 Kato is unmistakable.

Nishida Tadashige

Nishida Tadashige (b. 1942) is a Japanese woodblock print artist best known for his cat prints. 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.

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 Sosaku-hanga movement. As such, he created prints from start to finish, drawing, carving and printing them himself. In the 1950s 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 a 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.

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 small editions.

Ishiwata Koitsu

Kitano Tsunetomi

北野恒富

Kitano Tsunetomi (1880–1947) was a painter and printmaker who specialized in the genre of beautiful women.

Yamamura Koka

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

Gyosui Suzuki

Rakusan Tsuchiya

Eiichi Kotozuka

琴塚 英一

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 prints depicting Japanese cultural traditions.

Katsushika Hokusai

葛飾 北斎

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 among the greatest artists ever.

Ide Gakusui

Arai Yoshimune

新井芳宗

Arai Yoshimune (1863–1941) was a son of ukiyo-e artist Utagawa Yoshimune I, and studied under Tsukioka Yoshitoshi. He worked with publisher Hasegawa/Nishinomiya on woodblock print illustrations of Japanese fairy tale books, and later also on Shin-hanga designs by the same publisher.

Elizabeth Eaton Burton

Elizabeth Eaton Burton (1869–1937) was a versatile artist associated with the Arts and Crafts movement.

Man Zhuang

Ito Nisaburo

Kamisaka Sekka

神坂 雪佳

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 the various easily discernible parts—viewed up close—into vivid imagery. One of Junichi Mibugawa’s strongest points 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 by him become available, we will offer them here.

Joichi Hoshi

Kobayashi Kiyochika

小林 清親

Koizumi Kishio

小泉癸巳男

Ono Shigeyuki

Ono Shigeyuki (fl. 1930s) was a Japanese woodblock print artist about whose life very little is known.

Paul Binnie

Koho Shoda

Koho Shoda (1871–1946) was a Japanese woodblock print artist. His prints exemplified the spirit of the Shin-hanga movement.

Shoichi Kitamura

Suzuki Kason

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

Yoshimoto Masao

Yoshitoshi Tsukioka

月岡芳年

Yoshitoshi Tsukioka (1839–1892) was a Japanese woodblock print artist. He worked in a time when modern techniques like photography were diminishing the importance of woodblock prints as a medium, but kept innovating and helped to keep woodblock printing alive. His best-known series are One Hundred Aspects of the Moon and New Forms of Thirty-Six Ghosts.