Japan: 'Cormorant Fishing'. Yoshimune Arai (1873-1945)

Arai was born in 1873 and died in 1945. He worked with romantic scenes along beaches and rivers. Arai is known for Shin Hanga woodblock prints. Shin-hanga (lit. 'new prints', 'new woodcut (block) prints') was an art movement in early 20th-century Japan, during the Taisho and Showa periods, that revitalized traditional ukiyo-e art rooted in the Edo and Meiji periods (17th-19th century). It maintained the traditional ukiyo-e collaborative system (hanmoto system) where the artist, carver, printer, and publisher engaged in division of labor, as opposed to the sosaku-hanga (creative prints) movement which advocated the principles of 'self-drawn' (jiga), 'self-carved' (jikoku) and 'self-printed' (jizuri), according to which the artist, with the desire of expressing the self, is the sole creator of art. The movement flourished from around 1915 to 1942, though it resumed briefly from 1946 through the 1950s. Inspired by European Impressionism, the artists incorporated Western elements such as the effects of light and the expression of individual moods, but focused on strictly traditional themes of landscapes (fukeiga), famous places (meisho), beautiful women (bijinga), kabuki actors (yakusha-e), and birds and flowers (kachoga).