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• 1 2018-05-02T21:23:20-07:00 Shōzaburo Watanabe 2 plain 2018-05-04T01:44:56-07:00 Print publisher Shōzaburo Watanabe (1885-1962) became the driving force behind the shin-hanga movement, believing that prints could be both traditional and modern, embracing the past while still remaining part of the present.[1] He was also the one to coin the term in an attempt to differentiate the movement from the commercial mass art of ukiyo-e, despite the fact that most shin-hanga art was exported. Watanabe sought to combine the works of art with his carvers and printers in order to bring together modern design and a high level of craftsmanship that harkened back to traditional printmaking.[2] He wanted to make prints not for the Japanese market, but for Western buyers. Most of his shin-hanga prints were sold overseas to the United States or Europe. However,

  [t]he dangers of this Western-dominated market were that such prints would either perpetuate a touristy Japaneseness of subject and style or else become nearly indistinguishable from Western representational art. Both, in fact, did happen … the second in the picturesque but shallow landscapes from Yoshida [Hiroshi] and the later [Kawase] Hasui.[3] 

  This did not seem to bother Watanabe because in his view, what the Western market wanted was images of an idealized, exotic Japan.
   

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  [1] Lawrence Smith, The Japanese Print Since 1900: Old Dreams and New Visions (London: British Museum Publications Ltd., 1983), 35.

   
  [2] Ibid., 11.
   

  [3] Ibid., 17.