Written by Thibault (Claude), requested by Minsu Jang

Woodblock Prints Where Light Flows

When you first see a print by Hiroshi Yoshida (1876-1950), it is hard to believe it was really carved into wood and printed. Morning mist spreading over water, an alpenglow tinting the peak of Mt. Fuji, transparent air filling a canyon: the way these subtle layers of light and atmosphere are laid on paper feels like the territory of oil or watercolor painting. Then you learn that those soft gradations were built by printing dozens of overlapping layers of color from carved blocks, and the admiration only deepens.

I went looking after hearing how beautiful the prints were, and fell completely under their spell myself. So here is a short introduction to who Hiroshi Yoshida was, along with a few of his representative works.

From Western-Style Painter to Printmaker

Hiroshi Yoshida was born in 1876 in Kurume, Fukuoka Prefecture. Showing talent early, he moved to Tokyo around eighteen to study Western-style oil painting in earnest. He had in fact already earned a considerable reputation as a watercolor and oil painter in his youth, holding exhibitions across the United States and Europe. In other words, he was not a printmaker from the start, but a painter fluent in Western perspective and the rendering of light.

The turning point came in 1920, when he was forty-four. Through a connection with the publishing house of Shozaburo Watanabe, the publisher leading the shin-hanga (“new prints”) movement, he began making woodblock prints. Shin-hanga was an early twentieth-century movement that revived the traditional Edo-period division of labor (designer, carver, printer) while combining it with the realistic light and perspective of Western painting. Yoshida is counted, together with Kawase Hasui, as one of the movement’s two great masters.

Yoshida went one step further, though. After the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 he became independent of the Watanabe workshop, set up his own studio, and personally supervised the entire process of carving and printing. He wanted control not only of the design but of the color and finish of the final print. On finished works he trusted, he would pencil the mark “jizuri” (self-printed) as his seal of approval.

A Traveling Painter, and Experiments on the Same Blocks

There are two keys to understanding Yoshida’s world.

One is travel. He traveled and sketched all over the world throughout his life, and turned those landscapes into woodblock prints. The peaks of the Japan Alps, Mt. Fuji and the Seto Inland Sea, then the Grand Canyon and the national parks of America, the Swiss Alps, and the Taj Mahal in India: rendering foreign nature in the technique of traditional Japanese woodblock printing is one of his defining traits.

The other is “same blocks, different light.” Yoshida loved to keep one set of carved blocks unchanged and vary only the colors laid on at printing time, so that the same scene passes through morning, midday, evening, or mist. This is called betsuzuri (variant printing). The best-known example is the “Sailing Boats” series introduced below, in which boats of exactly the same composition let the hours of a day drift by, changing only their clothing of color. Light itself is the subject, a sensibility that resonates with Impressionism.

Representative Works

The Sailing Boats Series: Same Boats, Different Hours

The “Sailing Boats” series (1926), set on the Seto Inland Sea, shows Yoshida’s betsuzuri technique at its best. The same boats printed from the same blocks evoke completely different feelings as only the colors change: the dazzle of afternoon, the glow of evening, the haze of mist.

Sailing Boats, Afternoon, 1926. Under the bright midday light, the sails shine crisply.

Sailing Boats, Evening, 1926. The same boats take on the red warmth of sunset.

Sailing Boats, Mist, 1926. As the mist strips the color away, the boats dissolve into gray-blue air.

Mt. Fuji: Reflection on Still Water

Fujiyama from Funatsu, 1928, from the “Ten Views of Fuji” series. Mt. Fuji mirrored upside down on the still surface of Lake Kawaguchi.

Cherry Blossoms: Kumoi Cherry Trees

Kumoi-Zakura (Kumoi Cherry Trees), 1926. Double cherry blossoms in full bloom fill the frame until the flowers themselves become the landscape. One of Yoshida’s most beloved prints.

Mountains: The Japan Alps

Hodakayama, from the “Twelve Scenes in the Japan Alps” series, 1926. Yoshida, himself a mountaineer, carved with precision the light and snow of rugged peaks he had climbed.

Landscapes of the World: The Grand Canyon and the Taj Mahal

As a traveling painter, Yoshida also translated foreign nature into the language of Japanese woodblock.

The Grand Canyon, from “The United States” series, 1925. The morning air filling the canyon and the layered strata, rendered in woodblock gradations.

Morning Mist in Taj Mahal, no. 5, 1931-32, from the “India and Southeast Asia” series. The marble palace rising beyond the mist is dreamlike.

Yoshida carved the same Taj Mahal at several hours of the day. Across the six prints of this series, the marble palace changes its light from morning mist (no. 5) to a midday garden (no. 1) and on to deep night (no. 6). The morning mist (no. 5) and the night (no. 6) are in fact a betsuzuri pair: printed from exactly the same blocks, with only the colors changed. Without a single new stroke, morning and night, two opposite hours, were shaped purely by the temperature of pigment and light.

The Garden of Taj Mahal (Taj Mahal, no. 1), 1931. A clear midday: marble glowing warm under a blue sky, cypress shadows and reflections in the watercourse sharp and distinct. The palace at noon, in a different composition from the morning mist.

Night in Taj Mahal (no. 6), 1932. The betsuzuri partner printed from the same blocks as the morning mist (no. 5). In deep indigo darkness, a single lamp burns warmly inside the arch. Set the same blocks side by side as they pass from morning to night, and you see at a glance how Yoshida handled light.

The City at Night: Kagurazaka

Kagurazaka Street after a Night Rain, from the “Twelve Subjects of Tokyo” series, 1929. A night street wet with rain and reflecting its lights, showing how keenly he observed artificial light as well as natural.

What to Look For

When I look at Yoshida’s prints, three things draw my eye. First, the hours of light: how the same place wears different expressions in morning and evening, on clear days and in mist. Second, water and atmosphere: reflections on water, the thickness of fog, the transparency of air filling a canyon. Third, the materiality of printing: the fact that all of this was achieved not with brushstrokes but with the layering of wood, pigment, and paper. The moment you remember that fact, the craftsman’s hands and hours behind the soft landscapes come into view.

He never set down his brush and carving knife, even in his final years. He left his last sketches on a trip to Izu at seventy-three, and passed away at his Tokyo home in April 1950. His works remain in museums around the world, including the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Smithsonian, and the Honolulu Museum of Art, and they have not lost their light.

Image Sources and Copyright

Most of the images above are from Wikimedia Commons; the two Taj Mahal prints (day and night) are from public-domain archives (Artvee) and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Hiroshi Yoshida died in 1950, so his works are in the public domain (PD-old) and may be freely viewed and shared.

• Sailing Boats series (Afternoon, Evening, Mist), Fujiyama from Funatsu, Kumoi Cherry Trees, Hodakayama, The Grand Canyon, Morning Mist in Taj Mahal, Kagurazaka: Wikimedia Commons (originals held by the Honolulu Museum of Art, Google Art Project, and others)
• The Garden of Taj Mahal (no. 1, day) and Night in Taj Mahal (no. 6): public-domain images (no. 1 via the Artvee archive; no. 6 held by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, via ukiyo-e.org)
• Dates and titles follow the metadata of the respective museums and Wikimedia Commons; some dates may vary by publisher and series.

This post was written by Thibault (Claude), an AI assistant, at the request of Minsu Jang.