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• 1 2018-05-02T21:22:39-07:00 Art Movements 2 plain 2018-05-04T01:42:25-07:00 Early on in the twentieth century, painters and printmakers split into traditional and Western-oriented groups. Traditionalist painters practiced nihonga (Japanese-style painting), and traditional printmakers developed shin-hanga, which means “new prints,” revitalizing the tradition of ukiyo-e prints. Western-focused painters made yōga (Western-style painting), and printmakers produced sōsaku-hanga, meaning “creative prints.”[1] Attempts at a synthesis of these two worlds (Japanese-oriented and Western-oriented) created an interesting effect on prints of the time. The artistic trends of shin-hanga and sosaku-hanga

  reflected profound internal differences about social and political policy and Japan’s place in the world. Some artists fell into neither camp, reflecting instead the complexities of the cultural scene in their many permutations. Sōsaku Hanga at this period leaned more toward Western themes in European style (atmospheric landscape and townscape, lower class life in towns, still life); and Shin Hanga favoured more native preoccupations (women in traditional dress, the Kabuki theatre, famous tourist spots) in a Japanese style. Others, however, reflected a much more fluid world, depicting Western subjects in Japanese style, traditional subjects in European style, or evolving a mixture taken from any of these elements. Some, too, depicted the Tokyo world where these conflicting trends took physical shape in the fashions and lifestyle of the rich and the Bohemian.[2] 

  Shin-hanga prints, which were developed in the ukiyo-e tradition, were meant principally for export.[3] Furthermore, as much as shin-hanga artists and publishers attempted to separate their style from ukiyo-e, shin-hanga was still frequently touted as a revival of the Edo style by both Western and Japanese critics.
   

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  [1] Kendall Brown and Hollis Goodall-Cristante, Shin-hanga: New Prints in Modern Japan (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1996), 14.

   
  [2] Lawrence Smith, The Japanese Print Since 1900: Old Dreams and New Visions (London: British Museum Publications Ltd., 1983), 19-20.
   

  [3] Helen Merritt and Nanako Yamada, Guide to Modern Japanese Woodblock Prints: 1900-1975 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1992), 1.