Twentieth-century Japanese printmaking has come in for relatively little attention. Classic
Hokusai and Hiroshige landscapes and Utamaro's beautiful images of women remain the dominant
form. All the same since the 1990s museums and private collectors have shown a growing
interest in shin hanga ('new prints'): balanced designs printed on luxurious paper with the
finest pigments and in smaller editions. They are the fruit of the traditional yet highly
successful collaboration between artist publisher block-cutter and printer. It is not so much
in their subject matter as their visual language that shin hanga prints set themselves apart
from their traditional precursors. Where the classically depicted women were stylized and
idealized their more recent counterparts are based on real models individually recognizable
and full of emotion. The modern landscapes meanwhile are impressionistic rather than
figurative using a range of colour nuances to achieve highly atmospheric results. This book
offers a unique selection with which to explore twentieth-century Japanese printmaking. The
prints it reproduces are mostly drawn from two large private collections and by way of great
exception items from the family collection of the publisher Watanabe the man who started it
all.
