Kawase Hasui: Capturing the Soul of Japan - Hardcover

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Author Chris Uhlenbeck has organized several major exhibitions on Japanese art, including Shin Hanga: the new prints of Japan which was on view in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Sieboldhuis Leiden and in the Museum for Ostasiatische Kunst in Cologne, in 2022. Jim Dwinger is an expert in Japanese art history and a specialist in woodcuts, and Philo Ouweleen is a visual artist with an MA in Japanese studies.

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Kawase Hasui (1883-1957) was one of the most influential Japanese print artists of the twentieth century. A leading figure of the shin hanga movement and a prodigious designer of landscape prints, Hasui combined traditional Japanese themes with Western techniques, such as perspective and lighting.

Kawase Hasui: Capturing the Soul of Japan offers a richly illustrated overview of Hasui's almost forty-year career, with special attention given to recurring themes in his art, from the tranquil villages of the Shiobara hot-springs district to the shifting urban landscapes of Tokyo.

Hasui produced some six hundred woodblock prints, numerous watercolours as well as illustrations for magazines and postcard-sized prints that to date have been little researched. His activity coincided with a period of Japan's changing national identity and this publication explores how elements of state propaganda at times subtly shaped his choice of motifs, a trend also seen in the work of other shin hanga contemporaries.

Also included in this volume is a discussion of print variations and the use of seals in identifying Hasui prints, which assists readers - scholars, collectors and enthusiasts of Japanese art - to have a deeper understanding of this important print artist.