About the Magazine Shin Nigao

Source: Hanga Gallery website http://www.hanga.com/genre/actors/ and the website of JapanesePrints-London http://www.japaneseprints-london.com/6024/shiba-shin-nigao-e-published-1915/ and the tables of contents of the four of the five issues of the magazine.

Duringthe Taisho period (1912-1926), many of the urban Japanese youth weredrawn away from kabuki to more modern forms of entertainment,especially Western imports like cinema and baseball.

One notableeffort to revive interest in actor prints was the publication of ShinNigao 新似顔 (New Portraits) magazine in 1915. This art magazine was acollaboration among several Japanese artists, including Natori Shunsen (1886 - 1960), Ishii Hakutei (1882-1958), and Yamamura Toyonari (1885-1942). The general purpose of ShinNigao was to advertise for the kabuki theater, but it also gave theartists a chance to express themselves in new ways.  A total of 77 prints were published in the magazine over five issues, with each of the first four issues featuring 14 small woodblock prints and the fifth, and last, the "Coronation" issue, featuring 21 prints, including five portraits of officials associated with the November 1915 enthronement ceremonies of Emperor Yoshihito (Emperor Taishō) and portraits of geisha from Tokyo and Kyoto who performed at the ceremonies.¹  All of the prints were carved by Igami Bonkotsu 伊上凡骨, a master artisan who was a friend of the artist Ishii Hakutei.  Prints in issues 2 through 5 were also printed by Igami with prints in issue 1 being printed by Nakamura Sanjirō 中村三次郎. Most of the prints included in Shin Nigao areportraits based on simple line drawings. A few of these small printswere used as the basis for similar but more detailed shin hangaproduced by these same artists in later years.