Edutainment > Japanese Art Prints in the 20th Century

by Hiroaki Takahashi 1871-1945
Mt. Fuji Seen from Mizukubo
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"During the Edo period, a woodblock print was the same price as a bowl of noodles. He advised me not to be expensive, not to be elitist. He said it's for the public because it's printed art. Make it accessible to the world." (Tokuriki Tomikichiro cited by the artist Daniel Kelly)

Moku Hanga are the Japanese words for "woodblock prints". This is the second part of an essay in which the author, Dieter Wanczura, presents a thesis for a new mass market for Japanese woodblock prints, a popular moku hanga movement - comparable to the concept of ukiyo-e (images of the floating world) in the 18th and 19th century. This second part describes the development of the Japanese art print in the 20th century - from shin hanga and sosaku hanga to modern art prints after world war II.

Japanese Prints around the Turn of 19th/20th Century

by Kiyochika Kobayashi 1847-1915
Sino-Japanese War - Battle at Asan
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By the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century the art of ukiyo-e was about to become obsolete. The Sino-Japanese war (1894-1895) was the last success story of traditional Japanese ukiyo-e printmaking. The war events caused a boom in Japanese woodblock prints - mostly in the form of triptychs - displaying the latest events from the war front. These Japanese war prints were nothing else but illustrated news. Hardly any of the woodblock artists of the period did not contribute to this very special genre. Often the prints were sold out within days. Some of these prints are not only documents of the time, but are seen by art critics as great artistic creations. The war prints by Kiyochika Kobayashi are among the best.

Only ten years later during the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905 the situation had changed considerably. Woodblock prints as means of illustrating the war events had been largely replaced by photography and offset printing techniques. That is the reason why woodblock prints of the Sino-Japanese war are today available in the in great abundance, but those from the Russo-Japanese war are rare.

Shin Hanga and Sosaku Hanga - from Mass Media to Fine Art Prints

by Koitsu Ishiwata, 1897-1987
Amano Shrine
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At the beginning of the 20th century two new art movements emerged in Japanese printmaking: sosaku hanga and shin hanga. The sosaku hanga ("creative prints") movement was a radical turn-away from the old ukiyo-e concept. The sosaku hanga followers believed in the Western concept that the artist should do the whole process of creating art prints - design, carving of the blocks, printing and publishing (self-published) - himself.

The shin hanga movement kept the traditional teamwork idea of the artist (design), carver, printer and publisher. The sosaku hanga movement was carried by groups of artists. The shin hanga movement was based on the ideas of one exceptional man, a publisher: Watanabe Shozaburo. He kept to the original teamwork idea of ukiyo-e, commissioned artists to make designs in a kind of modernized style that was catering more for foreigners than the Japanese people, and exported those prints in large numbers to North America and Europe.

Both, the sosaku hanga as well as the shin hanga movement had one common denominator: The status of the Japanese print from an artisan mass product that was attractive in price and in its appeal for common people to a product of fine arts for a social and last but not least for a financial elite.

An old sales catalog published for the Toledo exhibition of 1930 lists prints by Hiroshi Yoshida for prices of $10 to $20. Taking the relative value of these prices on the basis of an average income of an unskilled worker, $10 corresponds to about $650 in 2006. To give you another idea about the value of one dollar in those days: The famous Ford T-model had a price of $290 in 1925.

Japan's Fine Art Prints after World War II

by Fumio Fujita born 1933
Shore - B
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The market for Japanese art prints after world war II followed international patterns. In practice this meant Western patterns known from Europe and North America.

After world war II the concept of limited and numbered editions for art prints became the standard for Japanese artists. This concept had been completely unknown for 18th and 19th century ukiyo-e and for 99.9% of the shin hanga and sosaku hanga prints.

Also the printmaking techniques used by contemporary artists changed after world war II. Western techniques like etching, lithography or silkscreen became widespread. But fortunately the Japanese technique of woodblock prints remained dominant.

Starting in the early 1950s Japanese printmakers could fetch surprising awards at international print exhibitions like the Print Biennial in Sao Paulo in 1951 and 1955, the Lugano Print Exhibition in 1952 or the Venice Biennial in 1956. This marked the recognition of sosaku hanga and the rebirth of Japanese printmaking after the devastations of world war II.

Dieter Wanczura
(November 2008)

Literature reference

The citation by Tokuriki Tomikichiro was remembered by Daniel Kelly, who had learned the art of woodblock printmaking from this great Japanese master. The Tokuriki Tomikichiro statement was found in the following book:

Betsy Franco and Michael Verne, "Quiet Elegance - Japan through the Eyes of Nine American Artists", published by the Charles E.Tuttle Company, Inc., 1997, ISBN 0-8048-3126-2.

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