Edutainment > Hiroshi Yoshida Prints - The United States Series

The Honolulu Aquarium
No. 9

In December 1923, three months after the devastating earthquake in Japan, Hiroshi Yoshida (1876-1950) and his wife Fujio embarked on a ship carrying them to the United States. In their luggage they had a bunch of paintings and a few prints which they hoped to sell in the United States.

The United States Series

Hiroshi and Fujio stayed in the United States until 1925. The Yoshidas organized exhibitions of their works in Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit and other cities. Fujio was, by the way, an accomplished painter herself.

To their surprise the American public did not go crazy over their paintings. But the prints were very well accepted - and well sold.

Fujio Yoshida Remembers

El Capitan
No. 10

Oliver Statler had interviewed Fujio Yoshida in the 1950s and wrote down what she had told him about her and her husbands's trip to the United States.

"We started in December after the earthquake. In addition to my husband's paintings we took the works of a number of other artists, trying to help some of those who had lost almost everything in the disaster. We had shows in several major cities, but we sold discouragingly few pictures. There was a good deal more interest in a few prints that my husband had taken along - his first prints, commissioned and published by the house of Watanabe. The fine reception given these prints, plus the fact that several foreign print-artists had recently created a stir in Japan, made my husband think that the Japanese had better get busy in the field that was once their own, and he started concentrating on prints as soon as we returned. It was then that he decided to become his own publisher."

El Capitan, Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, Mount Rainier, Lake Moraine

Mount Rainier
No. 18

The couple also used their stay in the US for sight-seeing trips. They visited some National parks in the West and North with famous landmarks like the Grand Canyon. They made sketches and oil paintings from the scenes. Hiroshi and Fujio were deeply impressed by the beauty of the North American landscapes.

The prints were created after their return to Japan in 1925 from their paintings and sketches. The United States series consists of six designs.

9. The Honolulu Aquarium - 1925
10. El Capitan - 1925
11. The Grand Canyon - 1925
12. Niagra Falls - 1925
13. Mount Rainier - 1925
14. Lake Moraine - 1925

Next Destination: Europe

In April 1925 Hiroshi and Fujio Yoshida left the United States in direction of Europe. Hiroshi Yoshida had been there before in 1900 to study Western art and to exhibit his own works. During his European year, he had won a prize in an exhibition in Paris and he had been in Italy, Germany, Switzerland and in England.

Literature source used for this page about Hiroshi Yoshida prints

• "The complete Woodblock Prints of Hiroshi Yoshida", published by ABE Corporation, ISBN 4-87242-121-3
• Oliver Statler, "Modern Japanese Prints: An Art Reborn", C. Tuttle, Tokyo, 1956, ISBN No. is 0-8048-0406-0

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