Featuring works from The Joslyn’s collection, this exhibition explores more than two centuries of prints produced in Japan. From artists like Katsushika Hokusai and Utagawa Hiroshige, who developed influential styles and techniques during the nineteenth century, to modern practitioners who adapted these traditions, printmaking has long been crucial in shaping the country’s art and culture.

Among many techniques, woodblock printing (木版画, mokuhanga) became prevalent in Japanese art in the seventeenth century. Under the military government of the Tokugawa clan (1603–1868), Japan experienced an era of economic development, urbanization, and cultural flourishing. Prints depicted scenes of everyday life, folk tales, landscapes, flora and fauna, and they featured all spheres of Japanese society. Described as ukiyo-e, or “pictures of the floating world,” these images gained popularity in the nineteenth century in Europe and North America, where artists and collectors purchased, copied, and imitated them.

In the early 1900s, a woodblock revival led to movements such as Shin-hanga (新版画, “new prints”), exemplified in the works of Kawase Hasui and the Yoshida family. Contemporary artists have paid homage to historical prints while reflecting shifts in Japanese society since the Second World War.

Pictured: Katsushika Hokusai (Japanese, 1760–1849), Under the Wave Off Kanagawa, also known as The Great Wave off Kanagawa, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, c. 1830–32, color woodcut on paper, 9 1/2 × 14 3/8 in. (24.1 × 36.5 cm), Gift of the Omaha Public Library, 2021.4.146