Gallery 3D: Tsuchiya Koitsu

Tsuchiya Koitsu (1870-1949) was a prolific artist of woodblock printed landscapes in the shin-hanga style. He studied under the Ukiyo-e woodblock print artist Kobayashi Kiyochika and produced images for the publishers Watanabe, Shôbidô Tanaka, Doi Hangaten, and Takemura Hideo. Several of his miniature prints are reductions of his larger works and are even produced in more than one diminutive size. Such reductions pose challenges as to what features can be preserved during woodblock carving and miniatures often feature small changes in design. It is not clear whether the artist would have produced these different sized images or whether this was left to the carver. However, since there was already a practice of reproducing classic Ukiyo-e in miniature, it seems likely that the carvers would have been directly responsible for the reductions and exercised their own artistic license in the process of doing so. A complete catalogue of Koitsu’s work can be found at www.koitsu,com.

Two woodblock prints, Sparrows and Plum Warbler, affixed to original greeting cards from a 1949 book of sample cards. Both prints were slightly cropped in order to fit into the printed decorative framing of the card. Compare these to the untrimmed examples of the prints that can be found below.

Prints published by Doi Hangaten.

According to Ross Walker and Toshikazu Doi, most small format prints by Tsuchiya Koitsu published by Doi were most likely printed after Doi Eiichi re-established the Doi Hangaten business in 1948. This would mean that the majority of these prints are post-humous publications since the artist died in 1949. Although many of these prints were acquired with claims that they date to the 1930s, we have opted to list them as undated unless there was strong evidence (e.g. an associated dated card or date cancelled envelope) to identify the approximate date of publication.

Prints Published by Shôbidô Tanaka

According to Ross Walker and Toshikazu Doi, Shobido published 24 postcard sized prints in the late 1930s without publisher seals. All of the company’s original woodblocks and print stock were lost during the Allied bombing of Tokyo in 1945 suggesting that all of the prints in this section are pre-war publications.

These first four miniatures were affixed to bridge tallies dating to the 1930s.

Prints Published by Takemura Hideo

According to Ross Walker’s koitsu.com website, Takemura published at least 28 postcard sized prints by Tsuchiya Koitsu with no current evidence that any such prints were published posthumously. The following prints were most likely printed in the 1930s through late 1940s.

Prints Published by Baba Nobuhiko

Publisher Unknown