The Shin-Hanga Movement — Kawase Hasui, Hashiguchi Goyō, and the 20th-Century Regeneration of Ukiyo-e

What Is Shin-Hanga? — The 20th Century of Ukiyo-e

Shin-hanga is the revival movement of woodblock prints that began in early-20th-century Japan. It was an attempt to revive the “painter, engraver, printer” division of labor of Edo ukiyo-e, which had declined after the Meiji Restoration due to the modernization of printing (lithography, photo-mechanical printing), and to make new prints with modern subjects and techniques.

Features of shin-hanga:

• Inherits the Edo-ukiyo-e technique (woodblock, multicolor printing, register) intact
• Subjects are the landscape, beauty, and actor of modern Japan (fusion of tradition and novelty)
• Also incorporates Western-painting shading and perspective
• Export-oriented — the customer base envisioned mainly European and American collectors
• The publisher Watanabe Shōzaburō (1885-1962) is the central agent

The term “shin-hanga” settled around 1915. The Edo period was called “old prints,” and the 20th-century new movement was called “shin-hanga (new prints)” to distinguish them.

Background — Why Ukiyo-e Declined

Collapse of the Print Market after Meiji

• 1868-1900, the nishiki-e of the Edo era declined rapidly
• Cause: the introduction of lithography and photo-mechanical printing made the division-of-labor system of print artisans economically unviable
• The very professions of painter, engraver, printer disappear
• The dozens of picture-book shops in Edo close; by the late Meiji, almost none remain

Meanwhile, a Ukiyo-e Boom Overseas

• 1870-1900, Japonisme was in fashion in Europe
• Monet, Degas, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec and others collected and studied ukiyo-e
• The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Metropolitan Museum in America collected Edo ukiyo-e in bulk
• Around 1900, demand for ukiyo-e overseas was higher than in Japan

The publisher Watanabe Shōzaburō focused on this contradiction. The idea: “If we make modern pictures with the ukiyo-e technique, they will sell in Europe and America.”

The Publisher Watanabe Shōzaburō (1885-1962) — Instigator of Shin-Hanga

Career

• 1885, born in Tokyo
• 1897 (age 12), apprenticed at the print shop of Kobayashi Bunshichi in Kyōbashi, Tokyo
• Kobayashi Bunshichi was an exporter of Edo ukiyo-e with a wide network of overseas clients
• Around 1906, opened his own print shop
• 1909, established “Watanabe Mokuhan Bijutsuga-ho” in Kyōbashi

Start of the Shin-Hanga Movement (1915)

• 1915, Watanabe commissioned woodblock-print designs from the Austrian painter Fritz Capelari (1884-1950)
• An experiment in East-West-fusion new prints, collaborating “a Western painter + Japanese engraver and printer”
• Then Charles Bartlett (British) and others joined
• This is the beginning of “shin-hanga.”

Employing Japanese Painters

• 1918, published the bijin-ga of Itō Shinsui (1898-1972)
• 1919, began Kawase Hasui’s landscape series
• 1920, published Hashiguchi Goyō’s bijin-ga (Goyō was independent but cooperated with Watanabe)

With this, the shin-hanga movement went into full swing. Watanabe organized painters, engravers, and printers, and revived in the 20th century the division-of-labor system of Edo ukiyo-e.

Kawase Hasui (1883-1957) — Leader of Shin-Hanga Landscape

Life

• May 18, 1883, born in Shiba, Tokyo
• 1908 (age 25), entered under the Western-style painter Okada Saburōsuke, then converted to the Japanese-style painter Kaburaki Kiyokata
• 1918 (age 35), met the publisher Watanabe Shōzaburō
• 1919, released his first shin-hanga series Tabi Miyage Dai-isshū
• November 7, 1957, died at 74

Style — “The Shōwa Hiroshige”

Kawase Hasui’s landscape painting is often called “the Shōwa Hiroshige”:

• Lyrical scenes of rain, snow, clouds, moonlit night, dusk
• Serene and poetic, figures reduced to small points
• Coloration based on blue and indigo, with a calm color
• Subjects are famous places across Japan

Representative Series

Tabi Miyage Dai-isshū (1919-1920)

An early representative work. All 12 pictures. Depicts landscapes around Tokyo.

Tōkyō Jūnidai (1920)

12 famous places of Tokyo. Quietly depicts Taishō-era Tokyo.

Tōkyō Nijūkkei (1925-1930)

20 pictures depicting the reconstruction of Tokyo after the Great Kantō Earthquake (1923). The face of early-Shōwa Tokyo.

Nihon Fūkeishū (1932-1940)

A large series depicting landscapes across all of Japan. A representative group of Hasui’s works.

Representative Works (Individual)

• Shiba Zōjō-ji (1925) — Zōjō-ji in the snow, a woman with an umbrella
• Magome no Tsuki (1930) — a moonlit night in suburban Tokyo
• Akasaka Tameike (1930) — Tokyo in the rain
• Kiyomizu-dera (1933) — a famous place of Kyoto

Hasui’s Technique

• Multi-color overprinting in dozens of colors — exceeding the Edo era
• Maximum use of bokashi-zuri (gradations of cloud, mist, rain)
• Also generous use of kirazuri and karazuri
• Strictly holds to the traditional techniques of hand-carving and hand-printing

Overseas Evaluation

• In the 1930s, Kawase Hasui’s prints trade at high prices in the US and Europe
• Famous for being treasured by Steve Jobs (revealed after his death in 2011)
• Even today, the overseas evaluation “landscape of Japan = Hasui” persists

Hashiguchi Goyō (1881-1921) — Master of Bijin-ga

Life

• December 21, 1881, born in Kagoshima
• His elder brother was the Western-style painter Hashiguchi Mitsugu
• Graduated Tokyo School of Fine Arts (now Tokyo University of the Arts) in 1905
• 1907-1910, rose to fame with cover design of Natsume Sōseki’s I Am a Cat, etc.
• Around 1911, took interest in woodblock prints
• 1915, produced his first print Keshō no Onna at the request of the publisher Watanabe Shōzaburō
• 1921, died young at 40

Because of his early death at 40, Goyō’s print works are few, but the level of completeness is extremely high.

Style — Bijin-ga of the Taishō Era

Goyō’s bijin-ga carry the lineage of Utamaro’s ōkubi-e, and establish a modern female image of the Taishō era:

• Close-up of face and upper body (ōkubi-e)
• Extremely precise description of details — each strand of hair, the shading of makeup
• Single moments of daily life (makeup, combing, bathing)
• Coloration in muted subdued shades, in Taishō taste

Representative Works

Keshō no Onna (1918)

• A single moment of a woman putting on makeup before a mirror
• A back-facing figure
• The form of a Taishō modern girl

Yuagari no Onna (1920)

• A woman after her bath, drawn as ōkubi-e
• Precise shading of the skin
• A variation on Utamaro’s Woman Blowing a Popping Toy, 130 years later

Kami Sukeru Onna (1920)

• A woman combing her long hair
• Precise depiction of the flow of the hair
• Goyō’s representative work, at the core of modern Japanese-style painting collections

Position as an Independent

Hashiguchi Goyō was an independent painter, apart from Watanabe Shōzaburō. Unlike the organized shin-hanga that publisher Watanabe orchestrated, Goyō gathered his own painter, engraver, and printer and produced.

But the technical and aesthetic direction overlaps with the shin-hanga movement, so scholars treat him as a major painter of shin-hanga.

Itō Shinsui (1898-1972) — Another Great Master of Bijin-ga

Life

• 1898, born in Fukagawa, Tokyo
• 1912 (age 14), entered under Kaburaki Kiyokata
• 1918 (age 20), joined the shin-hanga of publisher Watanabe Shōzaburō
• 1972, died at 74

Style

• Bijin-ga in the Japanese-painting style, inheriting Kaburaki Kiyokata’s lineage
• Draws modern women of Taishō-Shōwa
• Style slightly softer and sweeter than Goyō

Itō Shinsui, as a mass-production painter of 20th-century Japanese-style painting and shin-hanga, left many bijin-ga over his life. The core of the modern Japanese image of bijin-ga (the Kiyokata-Shinsui line).

Representative Works

• Yuki no Yado (1922) — a woman in the snow
• Oichi (1928) — a full-body picture of a woman
• Asahi (1926) — a morning woman
• His daughter Ashio Yukiji (actress, 1935-2018) is Itō Shinsui’s own child

Yoshida Hiroshi (1876-1950) — Another Lineage

Life

• 1876, born in Fukuoka
• 1899, studied in the US, learning oil painting
• 1920s, took interest in woodblock prints
• 1930s, produced his own prints in bulk
• 1950, died at 74

Style

• Fusion of oil-painting realism and Japanese print technique
• Excels at mountain landscapes and overseas landscapes
• Colors bright and vivid, in contrast to Hasui’s lyricism

Representative Works

• Setonaikai-shū — landscapes of the Seto Inland Sea
• Tsurugi-san — the rock surface of a high mountain
• Grand Canyon — landscape of the US

Yoshida Hiroshi produced in his own workshop as “an independent printmaker,” separate from Watanabe Shōzaburō’s shin-hanga movement. But in the broad definition of shin-hanga, he is included.

Shin-Hanga vs. Sōsaku-Hanga

At the same period, there was a different print movement apart from shin-hanga. That is sōsaku-hanga (creative prints):

Element	Shin-Hanga	Sōsaku-Hanga
Division	Painter, engraver, printer	Everything by one person (self-drawn, self-carved, self-printed)
Subject	Landscape, beauty (traditional)	Free (including avant-garde and abstract)
Representatives	Kawase Hasui, Itō Shinsui	Yamamoto Kanae, Onchi Kōshirō, Munakata Shikō
Customer base	European and American collectors	Japanese art lovers
Position in the age	“Continuation of ukiyo-e”	“The beginning of modern prints”

Shin-hanga is the revival of tradition, sōsaku-hanga is the modern revolution. This contrast is the two great currents of 20th-century Japanese prints. The next article’s Munakata Shikō is the representative of sōsaku-hanga.

The Export Strategy of Shin-Hanga

Watanabe Shōzaburō’s shin-hanga were designed as export goods:

Main Export Destinations

• US — collectors in Boston, New York, Chicago
• UK — the British Museum, art dealers
• Germany and France — the tradition of Japonisme

Sale Prices

• Dozens to hundreds of times the price of Edo-era nishiki-e
• Branded as “high-class fine art”
• Signed, limited-edition sales strategy

Modern Market Value

• Representative works of Hasui still trade at hundreds of thousands to millions of yen
• Goyō’s works are still more rare, at millions of yen
• Somewhat cheaper but more stable market than Edo ukiyo-e

Shōwa-Era Shin-Hanga

In 1920s-1940s, shin-hanga achieved commercial success in export. But:

The Pacific War (1937-1945)

• From 1937, foreign trade contracted
• Export-centered shin-hanga was hit
• Hasui too had drastically fewer commissions during the war

Postwar (1945-1957)

• 1945-1957, shin-hanga resumed around Hasui
• GHQ (occupation) collectors bought shin-hanga
• Hasui’s late representative work Hiraizumi Konjikidō (1957), etc.

Deaths of Main Painters

• 1921, Hashiguchi Goyō dies (40)
• 1950, Yoshida Hiroshi dies (74)
• 1957, Kawase Hasui dies (74) — effectively the end of the shin-hanga movement
• 1962, Watanabe Shōzaburō dies (77)
• 1972, Itō Shinsui dies (74)

With the deaths of the main painters and publisher, the shin-hanga movement subsides by the 1970s.

Modern Shin-Hanga

Continuation of Watanabe Mokuhan Bijutsuga-ho

• Watanabe Shōzaburō’s descendants inherited the print shop
• Still has a shop in Ginza, Tokyo
• Reprints using Hasui’s woodblocks (by modern engravers and printers)

Modern Shin-Hanga Painters

• Tsuchiya Kōitsu (1870-1949) — a contemporary of Hasui
• Kasamatsu Shirō (1898-1991) — of the late shin-hanga
• Recent young painters — attempts to revive Edo- and Taishō-era techniques

Overseas Evaluation

• Steve Jobs (founder of Apple) was a collector of Hasui
• Frank Lloyd Wright (architect) was a collector of ukiyo-e and shin-hanga
• Demand in Europe and America is deeply rooted today

Significance of Shin-Hanga

1. Inheritance of Edo Ukiyo-e Technique

Without shin-hanga, the division-of-labor technique of painter, engraver, and printer would likely have vanished in the early 20th century. Watanabe Shōzaburō’s movement let this vocational technique survive until the 1950s.

2. Visualization of “Modern Japan”

Shin-hanga visualized Taishō and early-Shōwa Japan in the technique of Edo ukiyo-e. This is a unique record not found in other media (photograph, oil painting).

3. Ukiyo-e as an Export Industry

Edo-era ukiyo-e was mainly domestic consumption, but shin-hanga was designed as export goods. This is a forerunner of overseas dissemination of Japanese culture in the 20th century.

4. Continuation of Japonisme

The 19th-century Japonisme continued into the 20th century through shin-hanga. In the distant background of modern Japanese anime and manga’s overseas evaluation is the export of shin-hanga.

From This Article to the Next

While shin-hanga was the “continuation” of Edo ukiyo-e, in the same era there was a print artist who chose a fundamentally different path. Munakata Shikō (1903-1975). Born as the son of a shoemaker in Aomori, Munakata began prints by self-study, and, with Buddhist subjects and bold black-and-white carving, lifted 20th-century Japanese prints into world art history. The encounter with Yanagi Sōetsu and the Mingei Movement, the Venice Biennale prize, and the aesthetic of renaming “hanga (prints)” as “hanga (板画, board pictures)” — the next article traces Munakata Shikō’s life.