Hideo Hagiwara (1986)

Profile Hagiwara Hideo (1913-2007) Sources: Collecting Modern Japanese Prints, Then and Now, Mary and Norman Tolman, Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1994 and Modern Japanese Prints 1912-1989, Lawrence Smith, British Museum Press, 1994, p. 23. Hideo Hagiwara is a master of the Japanese contemporary woodblock printing technique and one of the best known Japanese artists of the 20th century. While he employs a broad variety of printmaking techniques including woodblock, lithograph, etching and stencil, he is best known for his woodblock prints.  Born in Kofu City, Yamanishi Prefecture in 1913, Hideo Hagiwara lived in Korea and Manchuria during his early years.  After returning to Japan in 1929 he studied oil painting at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts from which he graduated in 1938.  While in school he briefly studied woodblock printing with Hiratsuka Un'ichi (1895-1997), a major figure in the sosaku hanga (creative print) movement.  He spent the first 20 years of his career as a painter (and continued to paint throughout his career), but during his recuperation from tuberculosis (1953-1955) he took up woodblock printing.  In 1958 he began to explore abstraction and began employing innovative and experimental printmaking techniques.  His work began to receive international acclaim in the 1960s with numerous international exhibitions.  Hagiwara served as Chairman of the Japanese Print Association for many years and in 1989 he was awarded a gold medal by the Nobel Prize Committee for five works produced on themes from the novels of Kawabata Yasunari.  He passed away on November 4, 2007 at the age of 94.

Biography

Hagiwara Hideo (1913-2007) 萩原英雄

Sources: International Fine Print Dealers website http://www.ifpda.org/content/node/967; 44 Modern Japanese Print Artists, Gaston Petit, Kodansha International Ltd., 1973, vol. I, p. 112; Contemporary Printmaking in Japan, Ronald G. Robertson, Crown Publishers Inc., 1965, p. 68-69; Modern Japanese Prints 1912-1989, Lawrence Smith, British Museum Press, 1994, p. 23; Collecting Modern Japanese Prints Then & Now, Mary & Norman Tolman, Charles E. Tuttle Publishing Co., Inc, 1994 and as footnoted.

Born in Kofu City, Yamanashi Prefecture in 1913, little has been written about Hagiwara's early years other than having spent them in Korea and Manchuria as his father was posted to these spots performing police duties.  In 1929, he was sent back to Japan and, in preparation for entering the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, studied under the painter Mimino Usaburo (1891-1974).  While at the Fine Arts school it is reported (Lawrence Smith in "Modern Japanese Prints 1912-1989") that Hagiwara took an extra-curricular woodblock printing course with Hiratsuka Un'ichi (1895-1997), a seminal figure in the sosaku hanga (creative print) movement.  After graduation from the oil painting department of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts in 1938, Hagiwara joined the Takamizawa Woodcut Company which specialized in copying ukiyo-e prints.  He did not engage in making prints himself, however; his task was to compare the works executed by artisans with the original, controlling accuracy and having the necessary corrections made.  He was conscripted into the army in 1943, working as an "army coolie,"¹ and returned to Tokyo in 1945 to find his house and studio in ruins and most of his early works destroyed as a result of the U.S. air raids.  During his recuperation from tuberculosis (1953-55) he began making woodcuts for greeting cards and printed his first New Year’s cards, which were well received and brought woodblock printing into his oeuvre.  His first print exhibition in 1956 at Tokyo's Yoseido Gallery consisted of figurative works, and 1958 marked the artist’s first showing of abstract prints, which were to bring him international acclaim.

Hagiwara taught at the University of Oregon in 1967 as a guest professor.  In 1977 he became a lecturer at the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music and in 1979 he became Chairman of the Japanese Print Association, a position he held for many years.


In 1983 he was awarded the “Purple Ribbon” by the Japanese government for his devotion to the development of the Japanese art.  In 1989 he was awarded a gold medal by the Nobel Prize Committee for five works produced on themes from the novels of Kawabata Yasunari.

¹ “New Shapes in Old Wood,” Time Magazine, September 07, 1959.

The Artist at Home

Source: Japanese Prints Today: Tradition with Innovation, Margaret K. Johnson, Dale K. Hilton, Shufunotomo Co., Ltd., 1980, p. 82
To visit Hagiwara is to become aware of some of the sources that stir his inspiration.  Art objects and artifacts of man's long history are carefully chosen to embellish the living and working spaces.  These objects span much time and geography with a common quality of genuineness, directness, perhaps humbleness - a sort of primitive, of-the-earth sophistication with meaning for all time.

Among his interests are the pots created more than 4,000 years ago during Japan's Jomon Period.  These pots represent Japan's earliest artistic achievements.  They belie their ancient origin in the fresh treatment of the clay.  There are scratchings, impressions from ropes, and thin rolls and globs of clay pressed onto the clay body, similar to contemporary techniques that feature the natural characteristics of clay.

One can appreciate Hagiwara's interest in such examples, where clay, hand, and tool work in natural harmony.  His own work reveals a similar harmony of wood, hand, and tool.  The influence on Hagiwara's work from Jomon pots and other artistic achievements of man's past has been strong, but indirect.  Hagiwara tells us he does not borrow style or imagery.  Rather, he absorbs the atmosphere of these creations, appreciating their directness, their natural use of material and tool, integrity of form, and use of scale and space.

Working in Series

Source: 44 Modern Japanese Print Artists, Gaston Petit, Kodansha International Ltd., 1973, vol. I, p. 112
As with so many other woodblock print artists, Hagiwara has worked in series.  In addition to being an excellent point of reference for classification, a series is useful in grouping styles and even more interesting when studying one particular style.  This prolific artist made more than twenty-two different prints for the Soil series, fifteen for the Stone Flower series, and twelve for the Fantasy series, with an average of twelve prints each for the next nine series.  Prints from the Stone Flower series were shown at the second International Tokyo Print Biennale in 1960 which secured his reputation as a leading print artist.

Selected Examples from Individual Print Series

(all images © Hagiwara Hideo)

A Prefectural Border with Autumn Tints Kenkyō kinshū

Burning Sky Sora Moeru

Innovative Woodblock Techniques

Source: Contemporary Printmaking in Japan, Ronald G. Robertson, Crown Publishers, Inc., 1965, p. 68
Hagiwara is always making efforts to find new materials, new tools.  He seeks constantly to develop new techniques to augment the many traditional ukiyo-e methods he now uses.  His approach is not haphazard or accidental but the result of study and research.  He insists that “One must know, rather than rely on the accidental.  Accidents are important, but one must catch, analyze, reconstruct, and utilize things found accidentally.  The value lies in the reconstruction and consequent predictability in the printing process.  One must never forget that the print must be reproduced and that, therefore, the process must be predictable.”  And then he adds, “It is the small touches –the details with tools, the modeling of the surface of the block – that count.”

Source: Japanese Prints Today: Tradition with innovation, Margaret K. Johnson, Dale K. Hilton, Shufunotomo Co., Ltd., 1980, p. 80
Hideo Hagiwara deserves a special place in Japan's history of contemporary printmaking, for his intensive exploration of the creative possibilities of woodblock, and for the outstanding prints resulting from this effort.  Hagiwara has expanded the potential of the woodblock not only by his own inventive techniques, radical to customary approaches, but also by careful examination of the traditional approaches where he has discovered previously untapped resources.  He has skillfully adapted these to serve his expressive needs.

Source: Website of the Freer/Sackler The Smithsonian's Museums of Asian Art http://www.asia.si.edu/collections/singleObject.cfm?ObjectNumber=S1987.1036
Hagiwara's expansion of the limits of woodblock printing through technical innovation was inspired by his admiration for the achievements of potters of the Jomon culture in Japan (10,000–ca. 300 B.C.E.). Studying the complex designs produced by the ancient artisans, Hagiwara sought to understand their mastery of material and technique. 日本現代版画 萩原英雄 玲風書房 1992