Sosaku Hanga (創作版画), or the “creative print” movement in Modern Japanese art, was an expression of individualism that emerged out of traditional Japanese arts and culture. Co-occurring with the more commercialized Shin Hanga (新版画) "new prints" movement during the early decades of the 20th century, Sosaku Hanga artists enthusiastically embraced the freedom to express their individual aesthetics in their choices of subject matter, techniques, production methods, and materials.
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| "Fisherman" by Yamamoto Kanae 1904 Image source: Revolvy.com |
The artists of the Sosaku Hanga movement advocated taking full control over all the aspects in the creation of their prints. Today this may sound like the natural way art is made but historically in Japan prints were made in stages. Each stage of the art was produced by a different group of artist/artisans who had trained for many years in their specialty be it drawing, carving, making ink, printing, or sales. For the early Sosaku Hanga masters, their engagement with the materials throughout the entire creative process was a deeply moving, often emotional, experience through which they felt connected to the earth and to life.
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| Koshiro Onchi, Object No. 4 1954 Image Source: Art Institute of Chicago |
Some of the artists involved in the movement were trained in both traditional Japanese and European methods. Many of the works that were produced from the early 1900's through the mid-1960's showed both great diversity and explorational spirit. From before the war and well into the years following, Sosaku Hanga artists explored expressionist and abstract styles focusing on line, shape, color, materials and subject matter far more varied than the classic Ukiyo-e (浮世絵) "pictures of the floating world" or Shin Hanga subjects of landscapes, famous sites, birds and flowers, beautiful women or kabuki actors.
In the collaborative yet hierarchical woodblock print culture of Japan, the rise of the individual aesthetic was a revolutionary idea during the early days of the Sosaku Hanga movement. While self-development was always an integral part of Japanese culture as evidenced through the ideals of Zen that had influenced all aspects of Japanese thought, individual expression or “self-expression” remained a more western ideal. Sosaku Hanga artists like Kanae Yamamoto, Onchi Koshiro, Shiko Munakata, Unichi Hiratsuka, Junichiro Sekino, Kiyoshi Saito and Gen Yamaguchi were producing works that were not the standard consumption of the masses and their early efforts were not easily understood by the public.
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| Koshiro Onchi, Object No. 2, 1954 Image Source: Pinterest Media Cache |
While Sosaku Hanga artists explored new territory in both design and production methods, they fully retained and built upon the integral contemplative qualities of balance and harmony that were inherent to Japanese art, design, and culture. Their unique and often abstract self-designed, self-carved and self-printed works of art required the viewer to slow down to take in the artist's creative interpretation of life.
Modern Japanese woodblock print collector Hillel Krauss is a Sosaku Hanga enthusiast based in Toronto, Canada. Get to know more about his collection by visiting this page.
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