Miro, or Schwitters, had they been Japanese. He would exert a powerful force on the printmaking of his day.
The fourth dominant figure in this early postwar period was Saito Kiyoshi, who is handsomely represented here (plates 2, 58). Many American and European collectors started their gathering with two or three Saitos, and his works still command attention.
My affection goes to the work of two men I knew well. Azechi Umetaro (plate 14) was a rugged little fellow who excelled in mountaineering and whose prints reflected that obsession. Hiratsuka Un'ichi (plates 5, 76) was a handsome old man when I knew him as a family friend, and I marvel at his continued productivity as he nears the age of one hundred. I love his bold use of black and the effectiveness of his depiction of Japanese architecture.
Since this excellent book is divided into three parts— "Then," "Between Then and Now," "Now"—it is obvious that most of the artists whose work I knew well and collected will fall in the first segment, and seeing them again gladdens my heart. How bold are the two Sasajima Kiheis (plates 4,91), how delightful to see again an architectural print by Hashimoto Okiie (plate 6). I once bought several strong ones from him as we talked in his studio.
I break into laughter when I see Mori Yoshitoshi's three wild rickshaw pullers (plate 8), and Inagaki Tomoo's Long Tail Cat (plate 11) demonstrates how the artist can utilize traditional line to depict a radically new type of subject matter.
I recommend enthusiastically the final portion of the Tolmans' book, for it gives affectionate accounts of experiences the couple has had as collectors. Each story is different, each is instructive as to how amateur aficionados matured into sophisticated operators of a Modern-print gallery that often commissions specific artists to produce prints typical of their best work. This means that this book is in some ways an advertisement for the prints they have on sale, but this emphasis can be forgiven because of the very high quality of the work they sponsor.
Were I still on the scene and collecting—the collection my wife and I did make has been given to the Honolulu Academy of Arts—I am sure I would want to add the following prints: Iwami Reika's elegant Silver Waterfall (plate 27) because of its imaginative use of texture; Kinoshita Tomio's delightful Gray-Colored People (plate 51) because of its amazing sense of being an actual woodblock; Mori Yoshitoshi's warmhearted Tsukiji Fish Market (plate 50) because it recalls old-style works that featured many human beings; and Nakayama Tadashi's Running Horses (plate 44) because it represents the joyous freedom with which these newer artists work.
There remains one other print whose artist I had not heard of, and a special case he is. Clifton Karhu is an American of Finnish ancestry and is thus a prominent example of the recent phenomenon in which foreign artists have come to Japan to learn the business of making prints and have succeeded. But I would want this print (plate 52) for another reason. It depicts the kind of Japanese house with which I was familiar in the postwar days. In the inland town of Morioka, north of Tokyo, I lived in such a house during my earliest days in Japan, and seeing this print evokes a world of nostalgia.
I believe that anyone with a love of art and the mysterious miracles it can perform would find in postwar prints one or two examples of this exquisite art that would give her or him great pleasure and understanding. How about six that came to me as a complete surprise: plate 55 (Watanabe Sadao) because of its use of Western legend; plate 56 (Takahashi Hiromitsu) because of its use of very old Japanese legend; plate 59 (Sekino Jun'ichiro) because it exhibits the marvelous accuracy of Japanese carving; plate 60 (Maki Haku) because of its stark Japanese simplicity and design; plate 65 (Miyashita Tokio) because of its Klee-like exuberance; and plate 79 (Shinoda Toko), the mistress of the lot for two strong reasons: it was done by a woman artist, a rarity, and it bespeaks the soaring simplicity of much of the best postwar work.
Austin, Texas
Preface
It is reported that when asked their occupation, some 70,000 Japanese listed it specifically as "artist." One can realize then the impossibility of including more than a handful in this book, even though we are concentrating only on the Modern print. Our purpose is to tell the story of contemporary prints from a position of our own close involvement for more than a quarter of a century, starting as poor students, continuing as diplomats (still poor but with better connections), and moving through the period of beginning, evolving, maturing, and finally becoming successful art dealers and avid collectors for whom, at present, finding has become more of a challenge than acquiring.
Our point of view is necessarily a particular one from which we hope to lead new collectors along a path we have already trod, minus the pitfalls. Naturally we have written about those artists whom we have come to know best personally.
This book contains several bodies of information. An introductory essay puts Japanese prints into historical perspective and gives a brief outline of techniques. The second section, "Then," illustrated with prints by the older masters of the twentieth century, seeks to describe how we went about putting together our collection. There should not be many surprises here since these artists, many in their seventies, eighties, and nineties, will be known and easily recognized by anyone who has even a minor interest in Modern Japanese prints. These artists have been written about at great length elsewhere, though not perhaps from our unique viewpoint as collectors and dealers.
The following section, "Between Then and Now," is a lengthy essay meant to be amusing. In this book about collecting, this essay gives a play-by-play description of a collector and his determined search for a specific print. It was not intended to be the ultimate in name-dropping, but was included to indicate the esteem and admiration that Japanese prints command abroad.
The last section, "Now," using fifty artists with fifty illustrations to explain specific points about print collecting, gives not only objective facts about each artist and his work but also includes anecdotes that may help a collector better recognize and remember them. Some of these artists have already been briefly mentioned in the "Then" section. We wish to state that not all of the artists talked about are artists whom we handle in our gallery; we also hasten to point out that all of the artists whom we do carry are, of course, included here.
We have presented all of the prints in full color, in as large a format as possible, so that the art lover can savor the details of each work. We sell prints every day and have attempted to write the text in a rather breezy manner, in much the same way we deliver our presentation to clients from more than thirty-five nations. Since we have been doing this for twenty years, we have come to realize what sort of information people are looking for to make a print come alive for them.
During the gathering of the prints in the "Then" section, we were young students and following that, diplomats. There was never a single purchase that did not require a sacrifice since, as everyone knows, neither students nor diplomats are noted for voluminous amounts of disposable income. Nevertheless, we found that our involvement with prints came to be one of the most absorbing and satisfying aspects of our lives. We continued to search for the works we read about, saw illustrated, yearned over at galleries and museums, or simply stumbled across in unlikely places. Needless to say, this hobby cramped us monetarily for years.
After a while, when we found our original occupation to be less and less rewarding both emotionally and financially, we decided to make a change and become art dealers, a decision we have never regretted. This did not happen overnight. During the years Norman worked in the Cultural Office (USIS) of the American Embassy in Tokyo and in its various branches throughout Japan, quite a bit of time was given to visiting divers artists, escorting state visitors to interesting ateliers, helping artists with little English-language ability answer their overseas correspondence, arranging the presence of artists at ambassadorial dinners or other embassy functions, and, in general, having a great deal of contact with the Japanese art scene.
It does not occur to most people
