Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo Art Library

Creative Print Magazine Collection

The Art Library at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo has proactively collected Creative Print（Sosaku-Hanga）magazines since its predecessor, the Art Library at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. The collection mostly consists of magazines donated by the bereaved families of printmakers or print collectors. There are about 500 magazines.

A Creative Print magazine is a publication released sequentially with original print works on sheets of paper or print works bound together. Many such magazines were published with the rise of the Creative Print art movement from the middle of the Meiji period to the beginning of the Showa period.

About Creative Print Magazine

In Japan, print works were created through the division of labor until the Edo period, when three types of artisans each followed one step: a painter drew the painting, a carver carved the wood block, and a printer colored the woodblock and handled the printing.

However, at the beginning of the 1900s, young artists such as Kanae Yamamoto (1882-1946), Hakutei Ishii (1882-1958) and Tsunetomo Morita (1881-1933) proposed the self-drawing, self-carving and self-printing approach. Their proposal led to the development of the Creative Print art movement, which eventually became the main stream of print work creation in Japan. As a result, Creative Print groups and clubs were formed.

Meanwhile, Kanae Yamamoto and others issued magazines featuring their original poems and print works, which helped form the concept that magazines themselves were artworks rooted in society. The new genre of Creative Print magazine was established as a medium for releasing artworks when the replicable creation of print work gained the medium of magazine.

Print work magazines with intense locality were newly issued with the nationwide expansion of the Creative Print art movement. Popular artists joined the movement and released their works in such magazines, such as Sumio Kawakami (1895-1972) and Shiko Munakata (1903-1975).

Creative Print magazines attained prosperity until the early stages of the Showa period. It represented the diverse expression of print works in Modern Japan ranging from the simple touch expressed by a carving knife to the influence of Taisho Modernism and Proletarian art, as well as the inclination toward the abstract and expressionism represented by Koshiro Onchi (1891-1955).

About Collection

The Creative Print (Sosaku-Hanga) magazine collection includes materials that are important in modern Japanese art history, such as “Heitan” issued by the artists including Kanae Yamamoto in the dawning age of Creative Print magazine, and “Tsukuhae” issued by three artists: Koshiro Onchi, Shizuo Fujimori (1891-1943) and Kyokichi Tanaka (1892-1915).

The collection is clearly characterized by the diversity of locality, including “Satoporo” and “Hanga Nagasaki”, which were issued in Hokkaido and Nagasaki, respectively.

Moreover, the collection was enhanced by the generous donation of materials previously owned by artists such as Kanenori Suwa (1897-1932) and Toshiro Maeda (1904-1990).

List

Click on the image to view the high definition image. Click on the image title to display the catalog data.

Notes

・Materials in the form of a pamphlet are shown in the way it is spread and facing in the same direction to reproduce the status of the material. Therefore, letters and/or figures may be shown upside down if text starts with both a front cover and a back cover of the material.

・Displayed pages of a material in the form of a pamphlet start with a front cover as a rule. However, if it is difficult to tell which side is the front cover or the pages following the front cover are turned upside down, the sequence of showing was decided in accordance with the standards of the Art Library at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo.

・Ask at the librarian desk if you wish to make photocopies of images in the materials.(Black and White: 30 yen per copy; Colour: 100 yen per copy)

Using data of the materials requires the approval of the Art Library at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo. We accept no responsibility for any issues arising from unauthorized use.

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