This fascinating publication showcases the Saint Louis Art Museum's collection of Japanese military prints and related materials―one of the largest collections of such works in the world. The 1,400 objects in the collection are mostly color woodblock prints, but the holdings also include paintings, lithographs, photographs, stereographs, books, magazines, maps, game boards, textiles, ceramics, toys, sketchbooks, and commemorative materials. This extraordinary body of visual works chronicles Japan's rise as a modern nation from the beginning of the Meiji Restoration in 1868 through the aftermath of Pearl Harbor in 1942, with a focus on the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars. Conflicts of Interest will bring to light an important aspect of Japan's visual culture and the narratives it circulated for its citizens, allies, and enemies on the world stage.

Conflicts of Interest: Art and War in Modern Japan

Arts & Photography

Marks, Andreas

Paget, Rhiannon

Dobson, Sebastian

Hu,Philip

Kaneko, Maki

History & Criticism

University of Washington Press

Born in Kyoto in 1947, Fukami Sueharu belongs to a generation of ceramic artists in postwar Japan who devoted themselves to the creation of sculptural ceramics, free from traditional forms. He is internationally known for his polished, razor-sharp, minimalist porcelain sculptures with elegant pale bluish glaze inspired by Chinese porcelains of the 10th to 14th centuries. He can be considered the most successful living Japanese artist working in any medium.
Fukami: Purity of Form presents a comprehensive account of Fukami's artistic career, incorporating his entire oeuvre.
Andreas Marks is the director of the Clark Center for Japanese Art and Culture, Hanford, California. Other contributors include Louise Cort, Alice and Halsey North, Hans Bjarne Thomsen, Patricia Vollum, and Cora Wurmell.

Fukami: Purity of Form (English and Japanese Edition)

Clark Ctr for Japanese Art &

Modern Twist explores the evocative, sensual, and sculptural power of contemporary bamboo art. Bamboo is a quintessential part of Japanese culture, shaping the country's social, artistic, and spiritual landscape. Although bamboo is an abundant natural resource, it is a challenging artistic medium with fewer than 100 professional bamboo artists in Japan today. Mastering the art form requires decades of meticulous practice while learning how to harvest, split, and plait the bamboo. Modern Twist features 17 of these artists and 38 of their innovative and imaginatively crafted sculptures. Two of the artists have been named Living National Treasures by the Japanese government: Katsushiro Soho and Fujinamu Noboru. Modern Twist celebrates artists who have helped to redefine a traditional craft as a modern genre, inventing unexpected new forms and pushing the medium to new levels of conceptual, technical, and artistic ingenuity.

Modern Twist: Contemporary Japanese Bamboo Art

International Arts and Artists

Deadly weaponry and artistic ingenuity are celebrated in Lethal Beauty, a collection that explores the evolution of the warrior aesthetic unique to samurai history and artistry.In Lethal Beauty, Dr. Andreas Marks showcases a comprehensive range of 63 exceptional works by 30 master craftsmen. The exhibition which this book draws from features full suits of armor, helmets, warrior hats, face masks, long and short swords, daggers, matchlock rifles, and more. The range of blades spans from the 13th to the 20th centuries and highlights technical refinement and exquisite craftsmanship.The samurai are universally renowned warriors. Tales of their heroics have enchanted listeners since the 12th century, and perhaps more than any other warrior class in history, they continue to fascinate people of all backgrounds, cultures, and ages. Lethal Beauty provides a fascinating look at the striking duality of weaponry and artistic innovation that are an integral part of the samurai.

Lethal Beauty: Samurai Weapons and Armor

International Arts & Artists

Seven Masters: 20th-century Japanese Woodblock Prints from the Wells Collection focuses on seven artists who played a significant role in the development of early 20th-century shin hanga, the new print, and are noteworthy representatives of this movement. Drawing from the collection of Ellen and Fred Wells at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, it features the spectacular beauty portraits of Hashiguchi Goyo, Ito Shinsui (1898–1972), Yamakawa Shuho (1898–1944), and Torii Kotondo (1900–1976), the striking actors of Yamamura Toyonari (Koka; 1886–1942) and Natori Shunsen (1886–1960), as well as the evocative landscapes of Kawase Hasui (1883–1957). Essays by Andreas Marks, Chiaki Ajioka, Ishida Yasuhiro, Yuiko Kimura-Tilford, Amy Reigle Newland, Charles Walbridge, and Yano Haruyo offer extended biographies of each artist and insights into the enticing world of shin hanga. Richly illustrated with more than 300 images, the previously unpublished material in these essays deepens an understanding of the artists as painters and print designers.

Seven Masters: 20th Century Japanese Woodblock Prints from the Wells Collection

Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Since the Neolithic era, artisans in East Asia have coated bowls, cups, boxes, baskets, and other utilitarian objects with a natural polymer distilled from the sap of the Rhus verniciflua, known as the lacquer tree. Lacquerware was, and still is, prized for its sheen—a lustrous beauty that artists learned to accentuate over the centuries with inlaid gold, silver, mother-of-pearl, and other precious materials.
This tradition has undergone challenges over the past thirty years. A small but enterprising circle of lacquer artists has pushed the medium in entirely new and dynamic directions by creating large-scale sculptures—works that are both conceptually innovative and superbly exploitive of lacquer’s natural virtues. 
Featuring thirty works by sixteen artists, this handsome publication details the first-ever exhibition of contemporary Japanese lacquer sculpture in the United States, shown at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Hard Bodies: Contemporary Japanese Lacquer Sculpture

Sculpture

Minneapolis Institute of Art

From Edouard Manet’s portrait of naturalist writer Émile Zola sitting among his Japanese art finds to Van Gogh’s meticulous copies of the Hiroshige prints he devotedly collected, 19th-century pioneers of European modernism made no secret of their love of Japanese art. In all its sensuality, freedom, and effervescence, the woodblock print is single-handedly credited with the wave of japonaiserie that first enthralled France and, later, all of Europe―but often remains misunderstood as an “exotic” artifact that helped inspire Western creativity.
The fact is that the Japanese woodblock print is a phenomenon of which there exists no Western equivalent. Some of the most disruptive ideas in modern art―including, as Karl Marx put it, that “all that is solid melts into air”―were invented in Japan in the 1700s and expressed like never before in the designs of such masters as Hokusai, Utamaro, and Hiroshige in the early 19th century.
This book lifts the veil on a much-loved but little-understood art form by presenting the 200 most exceptional Japanese woodblock prints in their historical context. Ranging from the 17th-century development of decadent ukiyo-e, or “pictures of the floating world,” to the decline and later resurgence of prints in the early 20th century, the images collected in this edition make up an unmatched record not only of a unique genre in art history, but also of the shifting mores and cultural development of Japan.
From mystical mountains to snowy passes, samurai swordsmen to sex workers in shop windows, each piece is explored as a work of art in its own right, revealing the stories and people behind the motifs. We discover the four pillars of the woodblock print―beauties, actors, landscapes, and bird-and-flower compositions―alongside depictions of sumo wrestlers, kabuki actors, or enticing courtesans―rock stars who populated the “floating world” and whose fan bases fueled the frenzied production of woodblock prints. We delve into the horrifying and the obscure in prints where demons, ghosts, man-eaters, and otherworldly creatures torment the living―stunning images that continue to influence Japanese manga, film, and video games to this day. We witness how, in their incredible breadth, from everyday scenes to erotica, the martial to the mythological, these works are united by the technical mastery and infallible eye of their creators and how, with tremendous ingenuity and tongue-in-cheek wit, publishers and artists alike fought to circumvent government censorship.
Three years in the making, this XXL edition presents reproductions of the finest extant impressions from the vaults of museums and private collections across the globe―many newly photographed especially for this project. Some 17 stunning fold-outs invite us to study even the subtlest details, while extensive descriptions guide us through this frantic period in Japanese art history.
Features:
The work of 89 artists, from the world-renowned to the unfamiliar
7 chapters organized chronologically to trace the history of the medium from 1680 to 1938
17 fold-outs, hand-folded due to their size and specifications
Exclusive reproductions from museums and private collections
An appendix listing all artists and works

Japanese Woodblock Prints 1680-1938

Travel

Asia

Taschen America, LLC

The Kisokaido route through Japan was ordained in the early 1600s by the country's then-ruler Tokugawa Ieyasu, who decreed that staging posts be installed along the length of the arduous passage between Edo (present-day Tokyo) and Kyoto. Inns, shops, and restaurants were established to provide sustenance and lodging to weary travelers. In 1835, renowned woodblock print artist Keisai Eisen was commissioned to create a series of works to chart the Kisokaido journey. After producing 24 prints, Eisen was replaced by Utagawa Hiroshige, who completed the series of 70 prints in 1838. Both Eisen and Hiroshige were master print practitioners. In The Sixty-Nine Stations along the Kisokaido, we find the artists' distinct styles as much as their shared expertise. From the busy starting post of Nihonbashi to the castle town of Iwamurata, Eisen opts for a more muted palette but excels in figuration, particularly of glamorous women, and relishes snapshots of activity along the route, from shoeing a horse to winnowing rice. Hiroshige demonstrates his mastery of landscape with grandiose and evocative scenes, whether it's the peaceful banks of the Ota River, the forbidding Wada Pass, or a moonlit ascent between Yawata and Mochizuki. Taken as a whole, The Sixty-Nine Stations collection represents not only a masterpiece of woodblock practice, including bold compositions and an experimental use of color, but also a charming tapestry of 19th-century Japan, long before the specter of industrialization. This TASCHEN XXL edition revives the series with due scale and splendor. Sourced from the only-known set of a near-complete run of the first edition of the series, this legendary publication is reproduced in optimum quality, bound in the Japanese tradition and with uncut paper. A perfect companion piece to TASCHEN's One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, it is at once a visual delight and a major artifact from the bygone era of Imperial Japan.

Hiroshige & Eisen. the Sixty-nine Stations Along the Kisokaido

Famous First Edition: First printing of 6,000 numbered copies Mount Fuji has long been a centerpiece of Japanese cultural imagination, and nothing captures this with more virtuosity than the landmark woodblock print series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji by Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). The renowned printmaker documents 19th-century Japan with exceptional artistry and adoration, celebrating its countryside, cities, people, and serene natural beauty. Produced at the peak of Hokusai's artistic ambition, the series is a quintessential work of ukiyo-e that earned the artist world-wide recognition as a leading master of his craft. The prints illustrate Hokusai's own obsession with Mount Fuji as well as the flourishing domestic tourism of the late Edo period. Just as the mountain was a cherished view for travelers heading to the capital Edo (now Tokyo) along the T&#333;kaid&#333; road, Mount Fuji is the infallible backdrop to each of the series' unique scenes. Hokusai captures the distinctive landscape and provincial charm of each setting with a vivid palette and exquisite detail. Including the iconic Under the Great Wave off Kanagawa (also The Great Wave), this widely celebrated series is a treasure of international art history. Among only a few complete reprints of the series, this XXL edition pays homage to Hokusai's striking colors and compositions with unprecedented care and magnitude. Bound in the Japanese tradition with uncut paper, Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji presents the original 36 plates plus the additional 10 later added by the artist. The perfect companion piece to TASCHEN's One Hundred Views of Edo and The Sixty-Nine Stations along the Kisokaid&#333;, this publication paints an enchanting picture of pre-industrial Japan and is itself a stunning monument to the art of woodblock printing.

Hokusai: Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji / Sechsunddreissig Ansichten Des Berges Fuji / Trente-six Vues Du Mont Fuji

Review\n“A visually stunning reproduction of the great Japanese printmaker’s most famous series.” ― The Times\n“Shares the late great’s fascination with the dormant volcano through his original series of 36 prints.” ― mymodernmet.com\n“From the age of five, I have had a mania for sketching the form of things.” ― Hokusai\n“ [Thirty-Six views of Mount Fuji] will enable you to get closer to Hokusai’s beauty and genius.” ― creativeboom.com\n“The year’s most beautiful art volume celebrates Hokusai’s big wave, snow-capped peak, tourists on the bridge, not just as beloved images but for the exquisite craft of woodblock printing. An object of luxurious, tactile delight ― Japanese traditional binding, uncut paper, silken box with wooden closures ― enhanced by insightful commentary.” ― The Financial Times\nMount Fuji has long been a centerpiece of Japanese cultural imagination, and nothing captures this with more virtuosity than the landmark woodblock print series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji by Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849). The renowned printmaker documents 19th-century Japan with exceptional artistry and adoration, celebrating its countryside, cities, people, and serene natural beauty. Produced at the peak of Hokusai’s artistic ambition, the series is a quintessential work of ukiyo-e that earned the artist world-wide recognition as a leading master of his craft.\nThe prints illustrate Hokusai’s own obsession with Mount Fuji as well as the flourishing domestic tourism of the late Edo period. Just as the mountain was a cherished view for travelers heading to the capital Edo (now Tokyo) along the Tōkaidō road, Mount Fuji is the infallible backdrop to each of the series’ unique scenes. Hokusai captures the distinctive landscape and provincial charm of each setting with a vivid palette and exquisite detail. Including the iconic Under the Great Wave off Kanagawa (also The Great Wave), this widely celebrated series is a treasure of international art history.\nAmong only a few complete reprints of the series, this XXL edition pays homage to Hokusai’s striking colors and compositions with unprecedented care and magnitude. Bound in the Japanese tradition with uncut paper, Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji presents the original 36 plates plus the additional 10 later added by the artist. The perfect companion piece to TASCHEN’s One Hundred Views of Edo and The Sixty-Nine Stations along the Kisokaidō, this publication paints an enchanting picture of pre-industrial Japan and is itself a stunning monument to the art of woodblock printing.

Hokusai. Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji

Graphic Design

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