Edutainment > Bijin Prints of the Shin Hanga Movement

Shin Hanga Art Movement
The Female Image
copyright Hotei Publishing

The Shin Hanga movement started around 1910 encouraged by the publisher Watanabe. It reinvigorated old ukiyo-e subjects like actor portraits, landscape prints and bijin-ga - images of beautiful women. Shin Hanga artists like Goyo Hashiguchi or Ito Shinsui took the subject of bijin to new heights as not seen since the days of Utamaro.

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Lesser Known Shin Hanga Artists

Next to the big star artists of Shin Hanga, a number of artists known only to serious collectors and art professionals, created prints of great beauty and sensitivity. The prints designed by these lesser known artists were usually published in small editions. Early editions are therefore sought after and not cheap.

This article was inspired by the book "The female image - 20th Century Prints of Japanese Beauties", published by Hotei Publishing, Leiden in the Netherlands.

The book offers a lavishly illustrated collection of bijin prints by well-known and lesser-known artists with text explanations in English and Japanese as well as short artist biographies.

Hakutei Ishii 1882-1958

Hakutei Ishii - Biography
Shinbashi - Twelve Views of Tokyo
copyright protected

Hakutei Ishii made a series of nine prints with bijin in traditional kimono costume and with a small picture of a Tokyo town scene in the image. The series is called Twelve Views of Tokyo and was not finished - obviously due to a lack of demand from the market.

Another bijin series is titled Twelve images of modern women.

Hakutei had studied art, including Western style art, at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts. At the beginning of the century he made several trips to Europe. In spite of his modest success as a printmaker, he made a great career as a painter and became a recognized and well-appreciated member of the Japanese art scene.

Hakutei played an important role in the promotion of the Sosaku Hanga art movement and as a teacher for coming generations of artists. Kishio Koizumi and Unichi Hiratsuka were among his students.

Toyonari Yamamura 1886-1942

Maiko Prints
Maiko, 1924
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Toyonari Yamamura had learned ukiyo-e printmaking as a student of Ogata Gekko. He graduated from the Tokyo school of Fine Arts in 1907. Toyonari made about thirty woodblock prints during his lifetime and a few lithographs. His early woodblock prints were published by Watanabe. Later he self-published his prints.

Insho Domoto 1891-1975

Insho Domoto graduated in 1910 from the Kyoto City School of Fine Arts and Crafts. The artist has an own museum devoted exclusively to his works of art, the Kyoto Prefectural Insho-Domoto Museum of Fine Arts.

The museum has about 2000 items on display, paintings, prints, sketches, ceramics and more. The museum was established in 1966. In 1961 Domoto had received the Order of Cultural Merit.

Kanpo Yoshikawa 1894-1979

Kanpo Yoshikawa - Biography
Beauty Hinazo, 1922
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Kanpo Yoshikawa designed actor prints and maiko prints in traditional ukiyo-e style between 1916 and 1925. Maiko is the name for young apprentice geishas. The artist had also a deep interest in music and in kabuki theater.

Hashiguchi Goyo 1880-1921

Hashiguchi Goyo had created only 14 prints during his life-time - the first at age thirty-five and the last shortly before his death at forty-one. These prints are among the finest and most expensive modern Japanese prints a collector can buy. They made Goyo immortal.

Only the first print was published by Watanabe. Then the artist took a break of three years from printmaking before he made 13 more prints and published them himself in a kind of subscription scheme and at rather high prices. Of his 14 prints created at life-time, 9 are bijin prints, 4 are landscapes and one is a nature print. After the early death of Hashiguchi, his heirs published seven more prints after sketches made by the artist.

Collectors should be aware that there are excellent reproductions of Hashiguchi prints in the market.

Suizan Miki 1887-1957

Miki Suizan - Biography
Visiting Kiyomizu Temple
copyright protected

Miki Suizan was from Kyoto - the second center of shin hanga printmaking, but in terms of total output far behind Tokyo with the dominant Watanabe as publisher. Suizan had studied with Takeuchi Seiho and became an acknowledged Japanese style painter. He belongs to the artists whose printmaking activities were only occasional.

Only 14 print designs are known - 6 bijin and 8 landscape prints. They were published by Sato Shotaro in 1924 and in 1925 under the title Selected Views of Kyoto.

Ito Shinsui 1888-1972

Ito Shinsui was a student of Kiyokata Kaburagi. At the age of only 17 he was admitted to exhibit at the official and juried Bunten art show. His teacher Kiyokata Kaburagi established the first contact with Watanabe. The collaboration between Shinsui and Watanabe lasted their whole lives. Shinsui designed mostly bijin prints and landscapes for Watanabe until 1960.

In 1952 the artist's work was declared an intangible living treasure - one of the highest public awards. And in 1970 Shinsui received the Order of the Rising Sun.

Shuho Yamakawa 1898-1944

Shuho's real name was Yamakawa Yoshio. In the style of traditional ukiyo-e students, he took his artist name from his teacher Shuho Ikegami (1874-1944). Like for so many other artists of the shin hanga movement, his print output was small. In the 1920s he created a series of beautiful women shown in traditional kimono dresses.

Kiyoshi Kobayakawa 1889-1948

Kiyoshi Kobayakawa made bijin prints of Japanese women in both modern and traditional attire. From 1930 to 1931 he made a series of six prints titled Modern Fashionable Styles. Another series is about women dancing in Western style.

Tatsumi Shimura 1907-1980

Tatsumi Shimura - Biography
Oibane - Battledore, 1953
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Tatsumi Shimura had worked as an illustrator for a women's magazine before he published his first bijin prints after the end of world war II. His origins in the fashion industry are very visible in a print like Woman playing battledore from the series Five figures of modern beauties. This series was published as a limited edition of 200 copies.

Tatsumi Shimura worked mainly as a traditional Japanese painter and only occasionally made a few prints. Therefore they are rare and not often to be found.

Dieter Wanczura
(January 2003, November 2009)

Literature sources

• The female image - 20th century prints of Japanese beauties, ABE PUBLISHING LTD., Tokyo & Hotei Publishing Leiden, ISBN 90-74822-20-7
• Helen Merritt and Nanako Yamada, "Guide to Modern Japanese Woodblock Prints: 1900-1975", published by University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, ISBN 0-8248-1732-X

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