Shin Hanga

About

In Tokyo around 1915 the publisher Watanabe Shōzaburō set out to revive the woodblock print, whose craft had declined before photography and mechanical printing. He kept the old division of labour between designer, carver, printer and publisher, but commissioned designs that absorbed Western ideas of light, shadow and atmosphere. The results became known as shin hanga, new prints.

Kawase Hasui travelled the country sketching snowy temple precincts, rainy canals and moonlit villages. Itō Shinsui and Hashiguchi Goyō gave the old theme of beautiful women a quiet, modern intimacy, Natori Shunsen portrayed kabuki actors, and Ohara Koson designed birds and flowers. Yoshida Hiroshi, trained as a painter in Western oils, set up his own workshop in the mid-1920s and supervised the printing closely. Look for soft colour gradations, visible wood grain and printed textures, and scenes of dusk, rain and lamplight. Many of the prints went abroad, to enthusiastic audiences.