Japan Journeys

March 23, 2015
Art historian Marks (Japanese Woodblock Prints) shows off an impressive selection of nearly 200 Japanese woodblock prints in this elegant four-color album. Drawn mainly from the collections of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (where the author heads the Japanese and Korean Art department) and the Honolulu Museum of Art, the prints capture the era following the mass arrival of Westerners in Japan in the mid-19th century. Opening with a short essay about how local pilgrimages explain the Japanese appetite for domestic travel, Marks organizes the prints by location, with chapters on sights in and around Tokyo, Kyoto, and other regions in Japan. Works by famous printmakers Katsushika Hokusai and the prolific Utagawa Hiroshige are well represented, including classic scenes of Mount Fuji and the ubiquitous “Great Wave.” Lesser-known 20th-century artists depict scenes from the 1940s with a modern sensibility, such as stark images of Tokyo Station with a paper lantern in the foreground. In some cases, details of the prints are reproduced in the main part of the book, with full versions of the images included at the end. The text is sparse but provides some historical context while allowing the images to tell the story of Japan in its many moods and seasons.

May 15, 2015

Armchair travel may not be as exciting as the real thing, but it's the only way to visit the marvelous landscape of Japan in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. And the best way to do it is through the medium of Japanese woodblock prints. Tuttle Publishing, which has an extensive list of books on all things Japanese, has brought out a charming tome of woodblock prints of sights both human-made and natural. Marks is head of the Japanese and Korean Art Department at the Minneapolis Institute of Art and his erudition shines through the volume's introduction and the clear commentary on individual prints. Although familiar 19th-century artists such as Hiroshige and Hokusai are represented by famous works, lesser-known 20th-century printmakers Yoshikawa Kanpo, Kawase Hasui, and Yoshida Hiroshi present another side of Japanese culture. Image quality is superb, but the book's small (8" 8") format sometimes reduces the prints to baseball card proportions. Nineteen of the images are enlarged to show details, and they are all displayed in full at the end so that each artist's composition can be appreciated. VERDICT A visually engaging trip through the Japanese landscape that will reward both print lovers and Japanophiles.--David McClelland, Andover, NY

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