Born 1984 Tokyo.  Attended Tokyo University of Arts gaining Bachelors of Arts and Masters Degrees. Studied under printmaker Azumaya Takemi.

Osaka  is a young but well-established as a lithographer and painter. She works with both stone and metal plate lithography, with beautifully coloured and detailed images most often of humans, each picture telling a story.  Unusually for an artist, she starts by writing a sentence or a paragraph taken from every day occurrences, and each of her images are inspired by something in her written words.  Her images have sense of humour as well as being thought-provoking.  Osaka made her London debut in 2019 with Hanga Ten, and won the inaugural Jerwood Printmaking Today Prize for younger print makers at the London Original Print Exhibition at the Royal Academy.

Permanent Collections: Machida City Museum of Graphic Arts,Tokyo; Zhejiang Art Museum China; Peninsula Art Museum, Shanghai

Linocut and etching. Born 1943 Tokyo. Ochanomizu Art School, Tokyo; Cherbourg Art School, France.

Although his teacher in Japan told him that he had no talent and tried to dissuade him from art, Hosoya ignored his advice and continued his studies. He went overseas in 1970 , spent one year in Paris, followed by a stay in New York. In 1972 he returned to France and studied at the Cherbourg Art School. He entered a competition sponsored by a French newspaper company and it was in this year that he sold his first piece of art work. Hosoya returned to Japan in 1973, and has lived in Kamakura since then.

On his return to Japan, Hosoya started to establish his name in his home country, and in the 1980’s showed at exhibitions throughout Japan. He has won several prestigious awards in Japan. In 1985 he won second prize in an international art contest in Belgium, and has shown his work in Switzerland and Lithuania. Hosoya has chosen to work with linocut and etching as his main printing technique, and portrays people in whimsical acts of dancing, circus training, talking to animals, or playing a musical instrument. His images are filled with a sense of humour and are almost caricature-like. The European influence on Hosoya’s work is evident in his often Picasso-like faces and portraits, and the fact that he sometimes utilises French words in his images, as well titling some of his work in French. However, he adds his Japanese dimension in printing his linocuts on thin Japanese washi paper, so that the fibre of the paper can be seen throughout the figures of his images. The artist that was dissuaded by his art teacher has become established in his own unique style and is recognised in private and public collections throughout Japan.

Lithograph. Born Springfield, Illinois. University of Arkansas; Obata Studios, Tokyo. Studied under Tsuyoshi Yayanagi, renowned Japanese illustrator and graphic designer.

Yamada has specialised in portraits of a number of well-known Japanese performers, among them the actor Ryo Tamuran and the revered kabuki legend Ichikawa Ennosuke III. Her images depict the fine features of the make-up of the actors as well as their colourful kimono display. Yamada now mainly works in watercolours and drawings, with exquisite detail and rich textures.

Etching, aquatint, lithograph.Born 1957, Rochester, New York. Lived in Kyoto, Japan since 1980. Connecticut College;
Middlesex Polytechnic, London; studied with master printmaker Kathy Carracio.

Permanent Collections: British Museum, the Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian Institute, Portland Art Institute, University of Rochester Memorial Art Gallery, Newark Public Library, Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, US State Department in Washington, American Embassy in Tokyo, University Hospitals, Cleveland, John Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, and several corporate collections.

Brayer’s early prints in Japan were controlled and detailed observations of her surroundings, mainly black and white etchings and aquatints. The study of woodblock printing, however, led her to experiment with gradations of colour. In 1985 Brayer started taking washi, Japanese paper, and collaging it on top of her watercolours, incorporating washi as an integral part of her design. The first prints of this kind went through about twenty proofings, with different combinations of papers and inks. Her latest prints have a spontaneous sense of fluidity and freedom, achieved by pouring hot acid onto a printing plate. The resultant works are flowing combinations of aquatint, chine colle and hand-colouring on hand-made, indigo-dyed paper.

Woodblock. Born 1921 Oita Prefecture.
Educated at Taheiyo Art School where he studied under the woodblock print master, Munakata Shiko.

Permanent Collections: the British Museum, London; the National Museum of England, National Art Museum Victoria, Australia; National Museum of Scotland; Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio; Museum of Japanese Art, Haifa, Israel.

Akiyama was deeply influenced by the wondering haiku poet and Zen priest, Santouka Taneda. In his wonderfully naive and whimsical woodblock images, Akiyama often adds simple sayings of profound meaning. The wondering monk with his staff or the owl, are recurring themes in his works.

There is something appealingly rough and unfinished about these prints, first in their use of folk-craft paper, spotted with bits of the outer bark of the mulberry shrub, and second in the rough edges of the images. This is clearly an intentional avoidance of elegant refinement, which at times fools the eye, making leaves seem to quiver and animals emerge from camouflaging backgrounds.

Lithograph. Born 1933, Yamanashi Prefecture. Musashino Art College; Kuwasawa Design School.

Permanent Collections: The British Museum, London; Museum of Cracow, Poland; National Museum of Warsaw; Poland National Museum of Silesia; Poland Sao Paolo Art Museum/MASP; Brazil Sao Paolo Contemp. Art Mus./MAC; Brazil Ibiza Contemporary Art Museum; Spain Skopje Contemp. Art Museum; Yugoslavia Gallery of Contemp. Art in Novi Sad; Yugoslavia Bharat Bhavan, Roopankar Art Mus;, India Ukraina Independent Center of Cont. Art; Ukraine Art Gallery of New South Wales; Australia Museum of Contemp; Graphic Art, Norway National Museum of Modern Art; Kyoto, Japan Gunma Prefectural Modern Art Museum; Japan Wakayama Prefect. Modern Art Mus., Japan Tochigi Prefectural Art Museum, Japan Hokkaido Prefectural Art Museum, Japan Shibuya Shoto Art Museum, Japan Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, Japan. Also represented in many corporate collections and has received numerous prizes at prestigious international art events such as GABROVO 1993, the Cracow International Print Triennial 1994 and the International Print Triennial of Norway 1995. In 1999 he received the Purple Ribbon Award from the Government of Japan, and in February 2000 he had a solo exhibition at the Daiwa Foundation in London.

Trained originally as a graphic designer, Endo started printing his lithographs in 1979. His early works, depicting everyday objects like pencils, light bulbs, eggs, bottles, were created by manipulating photographic images. In 1992 Endo progressed from the large machine to his own computer. A major change in subject matter came about when nature became the all-important element in his prints. Although the prints appear multi-faceted, only one photograph is used as the base. He experiments all the time, going back to his everyday objects, introducing them into his nature images or nature into them. His latest works have an ethereal quality, with light being as important an element as the grasses, leaves, trees. Endo works hard at not being stereotyped as typically Japanese, but, although fiercely contemporary, it is obvious that he draws from the long artistic tradition of Japan.

Woodblock. Born 1913, Yamanishi Prefecture. National University of Fine Arts and Music, Tokyo.

Permanent Collections: the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London; the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.

One of the most eminent woodblock artists in Japan, he has participated in a number of exhibitions internationally including the Print Masters’ Exhibition in Germany, and the Japan 2001 exhibition at the British Museum entitled “100 Views of Mt. Fuji”. Other series have included mythical figures, and male/female figures. Hagiwara uses layers of delicate overprinting, and subtle lines, as well as often a combination of bold colours in his imaginative works.

Mezzotint. Born 1949, Hokkaido. Tokai University.

Permanent Collections: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; Library of Congress, Washington; University of Alberta, Edmonton; The British Museum, London; Krakow National Museum; Osaka National Museum of Art; Achenbach Foundation, San Francisco; Taipei Fine Arts Museum; Art Gallery of New South Wales. Among numerous exhibitons, in 2004 he held a major exhibition at the Worcester Art Museum with Hamaguchi Yozo, the mezzotint master.

Hamanishi is one of a group of Japanese artists who have explored the rich, dark, three-dimensional effects achievable with the old European mezzotint techniques. It is probably the most demanding of all printing methods, and Hamanishi has reached exceptional technical proficiency in this medium. His early subjects-twigs, branches, rice stalks, rope- are presented in a three-dimensional form on paper. These are not produced from photographs, but each image has been painstakingly burnished on the plate. More recently he has began to introduce colour into his works of Japanese architecture and landscapes, adding metal plates or gold or silver leaf to his stunningly beautiful compositions.

Woodblock. Born 1927 Tokyo. Bunka Gakuin College. Studied under three of Japan’s outstanding print artists: Onchi Koshiro, Sekino Junichiro and Shinagawa Takumi.

Permanent Collections: British Museum ,Yale University Art Gallery, Museum of Modern Art New York , Cincinnati Art Museum, University of Oregon, Rockefeller Foundation, Library of Congress, Washington University of California, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Yokohama Museum of Art, Japan.

In the long history of woodblock printing in Japan, Iwami Reika is the first woman to achieve the same status and recognition as male artists. It took her quite a long time to find her metier: She first worked as a teacher, then in the office of a language institute. Then she decided to study art, first on a part-time basis. Having spent eleven years specialising in dollmaking, she realised that this did not satisfy her creative spirit, and in 1954 she turned to printmaking. Iwami Reika’s recurring theme is water and its flow, often represented by the grain and texture of wood which she uses to masterly perfection. She is a rarity among woman woodblock artists in her avoidance of colour. Her world is that of the “natural” Japan: sumi ink, handmade paper and real wood are blended to produce her austere yet powerful compositions. Her preference for black and white, often combined with embossing and some overlaying with gold and silver foil, result in a finished work that take her far from the cerebral, romantic and unpredictable works of the early sosaku hanga (creative print) movement to works of art elegant in form and design, with a simplicity that makes her abstractions easily understood and satisfying to the eye of the beholder. Iwami Reika is also a well regarded haiku poet, and the obliqueness and ambiguity of that verse form finds a visual expression in her prints which show great vigour and spiritual strength.

Woodblock. Born 1949 Tokyo. Musashino University of Fine Arts. Studied with woodblock print masters Hoshi Joichi and Sasajima Kihei. Kaneko has held several exhibitions in Tokyo, Kyoto, Chiba, Kanagawa, Okinawa Japan and in New York and Seoul, Korea.

Kaneko’s woodblocks are pressed by using the traditional style baren, or a handheld disc-like tool with a flat bottom, often wrapped in a bamboo sheath, and not by a pressing machine. Kaneko’s recurring themes are the traditional Mount Fuji, Japanese fans, kimonos, and tabi (white socks worn with kimono). His compositions are often combined with embossing a gold or silver leaf, and at times using exquisite kimono material as background. His most recent works are of beautiful koi, or Japanese carp, in which he uses the natural wood grain as ripples in water.

Silkscreen. Born 1954 Tokyo. Tokyo Gakugei University; Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris.

Permanent Collections: Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; Osaka Contemporary Art Centre. He has exhibited in Australia and the USA and has been awarded prizes including the 1997 Osaka Print Triennial (Prize); 1999 Frechen International Graphic Triennial, Germany; 2000 Krakow International Print Triennial, Poland.

Kasai’s delicate silk screens have always had nature and light as a theme, wih seasonal intonations. Over the last ten years he has concentrated on the theme of water, usually seen from within, which started with a series of prints entitled “La Musique de la Mer”. Kasai’s mastery lies in the “bokashi” technique where colour changes gradually from dark to light without any discernable breaks and subtly depicts the penetration of light.

Woodblock,lithograph, collage. Born 1947 Idaho. Has lived in Kyoto for over thrity years. Morton Levin Graphics Workshop, San Francisco; studied under Sumi-e (Japanese ink painting) master, Tokuriki Tomikichiro.

Permanent Collections: The British Museum, London; The Brooklyn Museum, New York; Cleveland Museum of Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia; Portland State University, Oregon; National Museum of American Art, Washington. Numerous solo exhibitions in Tokyo and New York.

Kelly constantly experiments with different media and different styles. His compositions, which are usually large, have depicted images of beautiful ceramics to koi, (Japanese carp) to self portraits. His latest prints are combination of cement block, lithography or woodblock, and handcolouring. Most of his lithographs have woodblock colour plates on them, and many of his woodblocks include some lithography. He focuses on collage techniques to apply antique Japanese paper, gold leaf, and all manner of fibres to his compositions.

Silkscreen. Born 1942, Okazaki City, Aichi Prefecture. At the age of 16, she was awarded the Unesco International Space Painting Competition prize in Austria and in the 1980s was recognised as one of the most promising artists at international shows. She has held numerous one-man exhibitions in Japan,USA, Canada and Europe.

Kojima focuses on the female image, often depicting herself and her silkscreen works brings out an elegance reminiscent of the French Art Deco pochoir prints. Since the 1970s Kojima has been attracted to the different shades of black and white which emphasise many of her works, as well as intricate texture patterns. More recently Kojima has turned her talents toward oil painting and textiles, and has become a well-known textile designer in her own right.

Stencil Print. Born 1898. Died 1992. Tokyo. Graduated from the Kawabata Art School.

Permanent Collections include: Art Institute of Chicago, Barcelona Art Museum, Berlin National Museum, The British Museum, Detroit Institute of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, New York, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura,Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Mori is a master of the stencil print, or “kappa-zuri”, a printing process used for centuries by textile dyers in Japan. He studied under Yanagi Soetsu and Serizawa Keisuke, two renowned artists of folk art and stencil. He was a member of the Japan Print Association and the Japan Artists’ Association. In his prints and paintings Mori depicts the traits and sensibilities of the common folk of Old Edo or Old Tokyo, with their festivals and theatre performances, craftsmen and women of the demi-monde. Other favourite themes were the classic stories of The Tale of Genji and The Tale of Heike. There are fearsome warriors, often on startled-looking horses, and unadorned, unaffected artisans, kabuki actors in all sorts of poses, and women in even more interesting poses.

We are delighted to be able to bring to you below a rare masterpiece, one of Mori’s most famous prints, The Tiger Killer.

Intaglio – etchings, aquatint. Born 1953 Kanagawa Prefecture. Tama Art University.

Permanent Collections include: the Cleveland Museum of Art; the Hawaii State Art Museum; the Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts and the Yokohama Museum of Fine Art in Japan, the British Museum, London; the Constanza City Museum in Romania. One-man exhibitions in Japan and overseas.

Kuroda’s aim is to express the concept of motion. Using the bicycle as the primary object, he soon added umbrellas. The idea came from a scene in a Hitchcock film. Maybe it was the sense of mystery created by the visual absence of people, or maybe he simply felt that umbrellas would add mass to his compositions. Other changes in composition have developed over the years: in his early works, the bicycles and umbrellas were floating in vacant space. He then added trees, walls, fences, walkways, with the static structures emphasizing the rushing movement. He uses a variety of different intaglio printing processes to achieve contrast in his lines” some sharp and thin, others thick and blurred” and in his background or colour areas” some smooth and uniform, others dappled or textured.

Woodcut. Born 1948 Tokyo. Tokyo Gakugei University

Permanent Collections: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Yale University; University of Maryland; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford UK. Exhibited at many international exhibitions including Contemporary Woodblock Prints of Korea, China and Japan Ilmin Museum of Art, Seoul; Solo exhibitions in Tokyo and Seattle, USA.Morimura originally studied oil painting and his works were geometric-style abstractions. Later he was inspired by the master artists HATSUYAMA Shigeru and KAWAKAMI Sumio, and began to study woodblock techniques.

Morimura’s works are multi-coloured relief prints and unlike most Japanese woodblock artists who use water-based inks, Morimura uses oil-based inks to create his detailed and intricate images. His prints show mainly landscapes, which allow more structural freedom in composition. Because his purpose is not to copy the landscape, he does not make sketches. His geometric abstract origin can be seen to influence most of his landscape images such that there is a geometric pattern to many of his works.

Intaglio – etching. Born 1956 Tokyo. Rikkyo University and self-taught.

Permanent Collecitons: Cincinatti Art Museum ; Rockefeller Foundation, New York; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia; Bayerische Landesbank, Tokyo. Solo exhibitions in Tokyo, Osaka, Gunma, Chiba, Japan and London, Singapore, Thailand.

Nakazawa combines etching with stunning overlays of gold, silver, or platinum leaf, sometimes oxidised. His compositions are mainly blocks of these overlays often accompanied by Japanese classic writing. His philosophy is simply to create order and balance in a given limited space, taking a traditional theme to a modern conclusion. His inspiration comes from the highly decorative screen of Sotasu, a seventeenth century Japanese artist who used traditional Japanese style painting to illustrate an accompanying text.

Woodblock. Born 1947 Tokyo. Initially studied sculpture under the master artist Ogura Shigeru,then went into woodblock printing in the 1970’s.

Permanent Collections: The White House, Washington DC; University of Wisconsin; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Numerous private collections. Frequent exhibitions in Japan and USA.

Namiki is overwhelmingly known for his images of trees, often travelling to the actual location of a giant tree to sketch the subject before the printing process. He uses a combination of unique vibrant colours for the trees and as background works with a special gold or silver leaf creating an exquisite effect which lifts the trees from their background. His early works often contain Mount Fuji as background with several trees in the foreground, while his more recent works concentrate on one specific tree.

Woodblock. Born 1942 Kagoshima. Self taught. Started as painter winning awards and shifted to woodblock printing in 1985 exhibiting in New York. Permanent Collections: New Tokyo International Airport Authority, Chiba; Funabashi City Hall, Chiba; Prefectural Governments Hall, Tokyo; Sr. Citizens Welfare Centre, Tokyo.

Nishida is a recognized contemporary woodblock print master in Japan, and his works have been exhibited countless times at major galleries and high-end department stores in Japan. From 1986 to the early 1990’s, Nishida’s prints were being published as calendars for many banks and large corporations. In 1992 he was invited to participate in the CWAJ Print Show, and he has been exhibiting at this annual event ten times. Although now best known for his depiction of cats at play , Nishida’s imagery is wide-ranging and includes landscapes and nature scenes with beautiful trees. The designs are overtly contemporary and the prints are hand-printed with a variety of pigments, often including glossy oil-based inks and shimmering mica backgrounds. His works are beautifully printed and are actively collected by Japanese and foreign collectors alike.

Woodblock. Born 1935, Gunma Prefecture. Became Saito Kiyoshi’s assistant 1958. Saito is considered one of the finest woodblock artists of the twentieth century.

During his time with Saito Kiyoshi, Ohtsu has two major exhibitions, but it was not until Saito passed away in 1997 that Ohtsu became his own artist. He has held many one-man exhibitions throughout Japan since then. Although Ohtsu’s works are somewhat reminiscent of Saito’s prints, in particular the snow scenes of rural Japan, Ohtsu has been developing his own appealing imagery of serene settings. Ohtsu’s prints bear witness not only to the long tradition of woodblock printmaking in Japan, but with over forty years’ experience in this medium, to his own superlative technical skills.

Silkscreen. Born 1935, Hokkaido, Died 1999. Musashino Art College.
Studied in North and South America,Spain and France.

Permanent Collections: the British Museum, London; Queensland Art Museum, Australia; Cleveland Museum; Cincinnati Art Museum; Honolulu Academy of Arts; the Rockefeller Foundation. Solo exhibitions in Sao Paolo, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Australia, Norway, Honolulu, Vancouver.

Sawada’s lush paintings and silkscreen prints are now appreciated by a world-wide audience. His imagery is created by layering complimentary colours in soft yet brilliant gradations. Sawada’s use of bokashi (shading from a dark colour into a paler one without any discernable point of change) on his silkscreen has been long admired. He mixed each colour himself and created a visual poem of contrasts of shading by the juxtaposition of shiny and matte inks, and by a breathtaking precision of style.

Silkscreen. Born 1949, Tokyo.
Tokyo University of Education Graduate School; Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology.

Permanent Collection: University of Cambridge. Exhibitions: Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London; CWAJ Print Show, Tokyo. One man exhibitions in Tokyo, Kobe, Japan and England. Now splits his time between Japan and Cambridge, England.

Shimura uses metallic inks in his beautiful imagery of trees for which he is known. He is constantly exploring and refining it, and this concentration on a single theme has led to an ever greater depth. Some of Shimura’s favourite landscape is the Fens of Eastern England. Shimura has also expanded his medium into photography and his video works have been exhibited in the Heartland Arts Event, Roppongi, Tokyo.

Lithograph with hand-painted brush strokes. 1913 – 2021, born Manchuria, China.  Resided in Tokyo. Trained from age of six as a calligrapher.

Permanent Collections: Museum of Modern Art, New York;Guggenheim Museum, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; Albright Knox, New York; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Cincinnati Art Museum; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; Fogg Art Museum, Cambrige (US); British Museum, London; Singapore National Museum; Museum fuer Ostasiatische Kunst, Berlin; Museum Folkwang, Essen; Tikotin Museum of Japanese Art, Haifa; Rijksmuseum Kroeller-Mueller, Otterloo; Stadtisches Museum, Den Haag; Museum of Fine Arts, Gifu; Museum of Modern Art, Toyama; Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art ; Rockefeller Foundation Collection, New York; Chase Manhattan Bank Collection, New York; First National City Bank Collection, New York;Ford Foundation Collection, New York.

Shinoda is widely recognised as one of Japan’s greatest painters of the twentieth century. She first came to prominence in the 1960’s and 1970’s when she was discovered by the influential art dealer Betty Parsons, alongside works of artists such as Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock. Trained as a calligrapher, her preference is for the grey and black sumi (Japanese ink) strokes of colours against a field of white space. She ground her own ink in her house. There is great respect for spatial relationships in her sophisticated, deeply Japanese work.

Shinoda moved into lithography in the 1960’s which meant that her work became more available overseas despite her return to Japan. Lithography lent itself to Shinoda’s style, as she used her brushes directly on the plate or stone and could therefore be as spontaneous as in her paintings. She has written several short books which became bestsellers in Japan about her life’s learnings over the last century. She was also an accomplished poet and her works resonate her poetic sense. She died peacefully in 2021 in Tokyo at the age of 107 having inspired so many people.

Woodblock. Born 1956, Osaka Japan and from Kyoto.  Tama Art University, Tokyo; Royal College of Arts, London.  Based in London since 1989.

Permanent Collection: Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Oriental Museum, Durham University; National Museum Gdansk, Poland.  Exhibitions: Summer Exhibition of Royal Academy of Arts, London for many years since 1997; solo exhibitions in Japan and UK.

Shiomi started painting at the age of fourteen, and shifted to printmaking at the age of twenty. Her technique is based on the traditional way of printing, with water-based colours, but utilising new materials and tools including the contemporary Baren.  The artist makes contemporary woodcut prints, often using traditional Japanese icons such as the great wave by ukio-e artist Hokusai (b. 1760).  Shiomi’s imagery focus on the space and beyond, or indeed the world beyond, such as there may be a room beyond a door, and then a landscape. Her prints also have a distinct architectural context.  Shiomi completed her long-term project of smaller one-hundred prints series called, “One Hundred Views of Mitate” in 2017.  Please contact us for the available prints from this Mitate Series.

Etchings, lithographs, watercolours. Born 1959 California. University of Southern California. Lived in Kyoto since 1987.

Permanent Collections: the Portland Art Museum; the Allen Memorial Museum, Ohio; the Los Angeles County Museum; the collection of Morgan Stanley in Japan. Solo exhibitions in Japan and the USA.

Stewart is inspired by the “typically Japanese” themes, be they traditional or modern: a winter scene with old farm houses, a row of Japanese umbrellas drying after the rain, a grouping of pickle barrels lined up and stacked in a charmingly haphazard fashion, a stone lantern in the snow, and more recently the most Japanese image of them all: cherry blossom, just a few blooms magnified many times to make a most spectacular print. He has become very interested in the texture of ceramic, and his recent depictions of pots and vases have an extraordinary three-dimensional quality. His prints tend to be etchings or colour aquatints but Stewart does not restrict himself to prints. He uses watercolour when he ventures outside to recreate the countryside around Kyoto. His most recent project has been the completion of several large imagery of abstract and reality juxtaposed on each side of hand-made byoubu, or Japanese screens.

Silkscreen. Born 1938 Kyoto. Kyoto Municipal College of Fne Arts; Kyoto National Museum Japanese classical painting.

Permanent Collections: The British Museum, The Art Institute of Chicago, Brooklyn Museum and numerous private collections. Solo exhibitions in New York, Portland, Maryland, Washington, Australia, Canada, Japan.

Sugiura has been inspired by flowers for years, and he has an enthusiastic audience who appreciates every interpretation he makes of irises, peonies, roses, cosmos, camellias, chrysanthemums, or spider lilies. He is in particular noted for his compositions of irises and has made more than one hundred different iris prints. Sugiura relies on traditional Japanese techniques to execute his beautiful silkscreens. He applies squares of gold leaf, in the same way old screens were made, onto handmade Japanese paper. His next silkscreens his floral subjects onto the gold leaf. As each tone requires a separate screen, a colourful and complicated print may go through twenty printing stages. Next, blocking out the flowers, he uses a wash of pale shades of blue, purple, or green to cover the rest of the work, thereby toning down the glittering gold leaf and softening the effect. The result is visually relaxing, and soothing.

Stencil. Born1959 Kanagawa Prefecture. Educated at Nihon University.

Permanent Collections: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Library of Congress, Washington DC; Museum of Arts and Crafts, Hamburg, Germany; Tikotin Museum of Japanese Art, Israel; Singapore Art Museum; Kabukiza Theatre, Tokyo.  Takahashi has given solo exhibitions in Washington, Singapore and Tokyo, and participated in numerous group exhibitions across many countries.

Named Most Promising Artist , Grand Prix Exhibit, Isetan Art Gallery, Tokyo 1986, 1989.

Takahashi was strongly  influenced by the master stencil artist Mori Yoshitoshi (1898-1992), for whom his parents worked as printers. Like Mori, he specialises in kappazuri stencil prints depicting figures from the Kabuki theatre. One also sees the likeliness of the old ukio-e print  images in some of his works. However Takahashi soon developed a distinct style of his own in his colourful figures full of character and movement, and is known for signing his works just by his given name Hiromitsu. His editions are usually very small.

Screenprint, silkscreen. Born 1948 Osaka. Tama Art University. Bungeishunju Cartoonist Prize 1976.

Permanent Collections: British Museum and British Library, London. Exhibitons: Many solo shows including a major exhibition at the British Museum London, 1993. Several books have been published about his cartoons and prints.

Takeda has always claimed that he is a cartoonist and not an artist. However, as a cartoonist, he must necessarily be a master of line and Takeda’s prints are finely defined and beautifully executed. Takeda also adds intricate surface patterns to his works. Takeda’s subject matters covers a wide range from cartoons depicting humour, pathos, cruelty of urban life, to complex tattoos on gangster forms, to studies of skeletal birds and animals. He is best know for his “Genpei” portfolio of silkscreen prints started in 1985, depicting warriors of the 12th century, and which is destined to become one of the great Japanese print series of the 20th century.

Etching. Born 1933, Osaka. Studied under the etching master Furuno Yoshino.

Permanent Exhibitions: the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Fogg Museum at Harvard University; Achenbach Foundation for the Graphic Arts. San Francisco; Honolulu Academy of Arts; Cleveland Art Museum; Singapore National Museum; Cincinnati Art Museum.

Exhibitions: several overseas, mainly USA, and Japan.

Tanaka is recognised as one of Japan’s most important contemporary etching masters. He is so well known that he signs his prints simply with the initial of his surname and then his given name – T. Ryohei. His prints usually portray charming scenes of thatched farmhouses, country lanes, bamboo groves, shrine entrances, and beautiful trees. His idyllic villages capture a picturesque Japanese countryside that is fast disappearing, and his prints are therefore all the more appreciated by those who wish that the traditional life of Japan could be preserved for ever. He finds his pastoral subjects in the surroundings of western Honshu where he lives, much of it teetering on the brink of extinction as urban development takes over. He is also inspired by the temples and shrines of Kyoto and has produced a series of prints on that theme. Tanaka insists that all of his etchings are of real places, and each beckons us to visit so we can share the artist’s pleasure. As with many traditional Japanese artists the seasons are very important to Tanaka, and although almost all of his output is in black and white, some of his recent prints have shown trees in glorious

Silkscreen. Born 1970 Tokyo. Nippon Enginering College. Studied under Kasai Masahiro, well-known silkscreen artist. Exhibitions: Solo exhibitions in Tokyo and Osaka. Tokyo International Mini Print Triennial Prize 2002.

Tokitoh’s subject matter are flowers shown in the most beautifully delicate hues of greys, blues, and greens. She achieves this by drawing the motif directly onto the screen and printing with translucent ink. By repeating the process about ten times, she gives the image substance while maintaining its delicacy.

Etching, lithography, silkscreen. Born 1950 Lima, Peru.
Has lived in Kyoto for last thirty years. University of California; Kyoto Institute of Technology.

Permanent Collections: the British Museum, London; the Cincinnati Museum of Art; the New South Wales Museum of Art; the Cleveland Museum of Art. Exhibitions: 60 plus exhibitions in Japan. Three books published about his works. Regular appearance on Japanese TV and media in regard to his art and environmental issues.

Williams developed his love of nature in his childhood growing up in South America. His works often depict landscape and scenery of rural Japan and his love of the countryside has also led him to be active on environmental issues. Originally a watercolour artist and etcher, he has moved into oils, lithography and silkscreen printing. He is currently working a large project to be displayed in a major temple in Kyoto in 2011.