Exhibition Archives Fall 2004

Kawase Hasui: Landscapes of Modern Japan
November 13, 2004–May 8, 2005
Scaife Works on Paper Gallery

The color woodblock print has a long and illustrious history in Japan, a history that culminated in the great landscape prints of artists such as Utagawa Hiroshige in the early nineteenth century. After the Imperial government opened Japanese ports to the Western world in 1868, the publication of color prints declined but was revitalized in the early years of the 20th century by artists inspired by a more modern Japan, but a Japan with deep roots in native tradition.

Kawase Hasui (1883–1957), one of modern Japan's most important and prolific printmakers, drew his inspiration from his native landscape. Initially a painter and commercial illustrator, Hasui came to printmaking when he was nearly 40 years old, but with a talent uniquely suited to translating the landscape into print. Hasui was a traditionalist, modest and self-effacing, devoted to recording both the great monuments and the undiscovered pleasures of Tokyo, Kyoto, and the Japanese countryside.

Hasui's landscapes portray a Japan quickly disappearing. In the early 20th century, Japan was rapidly becoming westernized and modern. In the aftermath of the devastating earthquake of 1923, Tokyo burned to the ground; the city was rebuilt, only to be destroyed once more during the Allied firebombing of 1945. Hasui's home was destroyed both times, but nowhere are the effects of such cataclysmic events evident in his art. In his prints, tranquility and beauty reign, as though an idyllic Japan existed in his mind's eye, a Japan immune to change, immutable in its purity. Hasui designed approximately 600 prints over a career that spanned some 40 forty years. Near the end of his career in 1952, the Japanese government officially recognized Hasui for his contribution to Japanese culture.

The prints in this exhibition are drawn from the museum's James B. Austin Collection of Japanese prints and from a private Pittsburgh collection.