Koitsu (1870 - 1949 )
Koitsu Tsuchiya's prints immortalize Japan's scenic beauty. Through subtle effects of light and shadow, Koitsu endowed his work with an aura of bewitching beauty. Born in 1870 outside Hamamatsu, his given name was Koichi. At the age of 15, he moved to Tokyo to study woodblock printing under Matsuzaki, a carver for the ukiyo-e master Kiyochika Kobayashi. However, he soon left Matsuzaki and became a student of Kiyochika himself. For 19 years, Koitsu lived in Kiyochika’s home, studying the art of Japanese woodblock printing. His first prints were war scenes of the Sino-Japanese war (1894-95). He later worked as a lithographer. In 1931, a chance meeting with the publisher Watanabe changed the course of his career. From that time on, Koitsu Tsuchiya specialized in Japanese landscape prints in the Shin Hanga style.
Shin Hanga | Pre-WWII Japanese Prints
By the beginning of the 20th century the social fabric of Japan was radically altered and ukiyo-e was falling fast into oblivion. Surprisingly, it was under the stimulus of the Western art world that the spirit of ukiyo-e was reborn through the Shin Hanga or “new print” movement. The discovery of the powerful impact of ukiyo-e print masters on the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists inspired a new generation of Japanese print artists who revived distinctly Japanese subject matter through modern eyes. International excitement for ukiyo-e paved the way for these artists to create woodblock prints with the same dignity, perfection and genius as the masters of the Edo period. As artists such as Goyo, Kotondo and Shinsui revived bijin-ga (pictures of beautiful women) and Hasui and Yoshida reinterpreted the landscape of Japan, Shin Hanga reasserted the principal genres of ukiyo-e with a renewed vigor. Browse our collection of Shin Hanga and other pre-war Japanese artworks today.