I've fallen in love with Shin-Hanga ("new prints", the new wave of Ukiyo-e in the early 20th Century). It feels as though it was inspired a good deal by Art Nouveau (which itself was inspired by Ukiyo-e, Wikipedia calls it "Japonisme").
Hasui Kawase is a fave: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasui_Kawase
Man, the shadows from the trees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasui_Kawase#/media/File:NDL-D...
Yes Shin Hanga is the good stuff.
I have grown to quite dislike ukiyo-e. It is essentially 17th century Japanese Instagram, in the worst possible sense, and began something closer to OnlyFans. It is incredible what it morphed into.
For reference, the classic book “Images of the Floating World” contains some of the most hilariously pornographic images of any serious art book.
For those unaware, Japanese has a word, komorebi, which means "sunlight leaking through trees". https://www.morethantokyo.com/komorebi-japanese-word/
Thank you for sharing this. These are just stunners. Every last one.
If anyone is interested in Ukiyo-e prints, there's a really fun episode of Samaruai Champloo that talks about them and gives a glimpse of the role they played as a sort of pop culture during the Edo period:
https://www.crunchyroll.com/watch/GRNQ388WR/artistic-anarchy
Also check Dave Bull's channel, he has been living in japan and learning woodblock printing for a long time, both as a carver and as a printer. He has a shop/workshop in Asakusa if you want to go there next time you are in Tokyo. They have both modern and old prints.
https://www.youtube.com/@seseragistudio https://mokuhankan.com/
I have several of his prints from the original Ukiyo-e series. The prints are incredibly interesting in their own right, since they use inks with very low opacity.
They're amazing pieces of art, and well worth collecting IMO.
I'm getting a 404
Could be a Cruncyroll error. Looks like it's on Hulu and Apple TV too.
