Yoshida Hiroshi (1876-1950) | Sunrise (Asahi) | Taisho period, early 20th century

Yoshida Hiroshi soon began to obtain printing blocks made from mountain cherry to create large scale prints particularly suitable to his treatment of Mount Fuji. Kendall H. Brown describes the proximity in which Yoshida worked with his artisans on such endeavors:

‘The shin-hanga artist most intimately involved with the production of his own designs was Yoshida Hiroshi. Like Goyo, he started his print career with Watanabe but within a few years founded his own studio, where he controlled both the creation and sale of his prints. Although he hired the master carvers Yamagishi Kazue (1893-1966) and later Maeda Yujiro (1889-1957), Yoshida also learned carving and printing techniques, often working on the particularly difficult sections of prints and almost always overseeing the production process. The word jizuri (self-printed), often found on his prints, designates Yoshida’s close involvement with print production, as does his use of the printer’s baren, or bamboo rubbing pad, as one of his seals. Yoshida carved the blocks of fifteen prints and contributed to the printing of many of his large prints.’¹

In Sunrise, the large format composition is rendered with a distinct painterly finish. The reflections of the water reeds are impressionistically devised and the tall grasses are rendered in graduating brush-like strokes. The misty clouds encompassing the base of the mountain are so delicately suggested to be almost imperceptible. Under Yoshida’s keen supervision of the entirety of the printing process, a clear level of detail was achieved as to make his works technical feats of woodblock print production.  

1. Kendall H. Brown and Hollis Goodall-Cristante, Shin-hanga: New Prints in Modern Japan, (Los Angeles, 1996) p. 40-41, fig. 37. 

For a similar impression of the same print in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, accession number 50.3642, go to:

https://collections.mfa.org/objects/255116