A fascinating and comprehensive reference album of Hiroshige, the last great figure of the ukiyo-e style.

The great artist of the Japanese popular school of printmaking, Hiroshige (1797-1858) transmuted everyday landscapes into intimate, lyrical scenes. With Hokusai, he dominated the popular art of Japan in the first half of the nineteenth century. He captured, in a poetic, gentle way that all could understand, the ordinary person’s experience of the Japanese landscape as well varied moods of memorable places at different times. His total output was immense, some 5400 prints in all. Ukiyo-e publishing was not a cultural institution subsidized by public funds, but rather a commercial business. During his lifetime, Hiroshige was well known and commercially successful. But the Japanese society did not take 100 much notice of him. His real reputation started with his discovery in Europe.

- This beautiful book, published on the occasion of a major exhibition in Rome, examines various aspects of Hiroshige's oeuvre and reproduces in colour some two hundred of his prints.
- The comprehensive text examines his life and achievement as well as his masterworks and explains the particular qualities that make Hiroshige such an essential artist.

About the Author:

Gian Carlo Calza is Professor of East Asian Art History at the University of Venice. He has published many books, exhibition catalogues and articles.

The most complete volume on the subject in any language Japanese graphic design has been researched and published in Italy up to the first decade of the new millennium, but there is a gap from then to today.
edited by Gian Carlo Calza with Elisabetta Scantamburlo

This research aims at filling that gap considering the first two decades of the new millennium, covering on one side the past, in the names of important recognized masters, and on the other side exploring new names and trends. The volume includes 85 graphic designers and 756 posters. It is the most complete volume on the subject in any language.

Japanese contemporary posters are considered to have started in the mid 50’s, after the Second World War and following a period of depression, post-militarism, and post-autarchy. The new expressive mode was fuelled by stimuli coming from abroad, but it was also a chance to reinterpret traditional themes and colours, bringing them into modernity in refreshing and successful ways.

Since the post-war period, Japan has seen a rapid evolution in the arts: painting, architecture, sculpture, graphics, theatre, music, and cinema. Influences, assimilations, denials, transformations, new creative processes gave rise to a vast quantity of cultural and artistic movements. In this maze of expressive forms, graphic design is a precious tool for tracing and following the thread of national creativity and the more or less intense permanence of traditional aesthetic sensibility in the new forms taken.

Over half a century after the inception of graphics and with the coming Olympic Games taking place now in 2021, this volume aims at taking a wide view at the trends and aesthetic shifts that can be traced in the development of graphic design in Japan.

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This book brings together the best of Japanese graphic design in the posters that accompanied Japan from the 1964 Tokyo Olympics to the creation of the Issey Miyake logo, and from the Osaka Expo to the official poster for the Pan-Pacific Design Congress. Ken’ya Hara was born in the province of Okyama in 1958. After graduating from the Department of Design at Musashino Art University in 1981 and obtaining his M.A. in 1983, he joined the Nippon Design Center where he established the Hara Design Institute in 1992.

Yusaku Kamekura was born in Kanbara in 1915. He is considered to be the figure who contributed most to the spread of Japanese graphic design in the post-WWII period. He graduated with a degree in architecture and industrial arts in 1933; in 1940, he became the director of Nippon Kobo and in 1949 he was appointed artistic director of the magazine Commerce Japan. His most important designs, including the posters for the 1964 Olympic Games, the 1970 Osaka Expo, the Hiroshima Appeals, and the logo for the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, all made a significant contribution to increasing his fame.

Shin Matsunaga was born in 1940 in Tokyo. After graduating in 1964 from the department of design at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, he joined the advertising division at Shiseido. He designed the PEACE ’86 poster and curated all the graphic design for the Sezon Museum of Modern Art. He also designed the symbol and official poster for the 1989 Pan-Pacific Design Congress, the human rights poster commemorating the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution, the medal for Mint’s 120th anniversary, the logo for Issey Miyake and RHIGA Royal Hotels, and the package design for the French cigarette brand Gitanes Blondes (1995).

Film director and art director Nagi Noda was born in Tokyo and made a name for herself as one of the most important young Japanese designers. She first achieved fame as an art director, designing publicity for the print media and graphics for publishing and the music industry, before working for bigger clients such as Nike and the Laforet Harajuku department stores. Ikko Tanaka was born in 1930 in Nara. In 1950, at just 19 years old, he graduated from the Kyoto City School of Fine Arts (now the Kyoto University of Arts) and immediately afterwards started working for companies such as the Kanegafuchi textiles company and the Sankei Shinbun daily newspaper. He designed the signage and medals for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and the pavilion dedicated to Japanese history at the 1970 Osaka Expo.

This book describes and defines what ‘Japan style’ is. It explores specific achievements in Japanese art and architecture, but also offers an in-depth analysis of the whole of Japanese culture, its vision of the world and of humankind.

‘Japan style’ is something recognizable to everyone: a beautifully arranged flower, an elegant piece of calligraphy or a simple rock garden, but it is also something that is very difficult to define.

This book gives the reader the tools to fully understand Japanese art and culture. As Gian Carlo Calza says, the path to understanding and appreciating Japanese culture is slow and long, and in order to develop the right sensibility on the journey, it is imperative that the reader acquires the necessary means. With this in mind, the author reveals and shares his experience in and knowledge of Japanese culture, defining the essence of Japanese style.

The book is divided into three main sections. In the first one (‘Irregular Beauty’), the author delineates the different aspects of Japanese culture and draws interesting connections between art, architecture, religion, philosophy and mythology. For example, he explains the aesthetics of the tea ceremony and its relationship to Zen philosophy as well as other subjects such as the function of the void in mythology, Buddhism and the arts.

The second part of the book (‘A Feeling of Nature’) follows a chronological path from ancient times to the present explaining more specifically how to interpret the different forms of Japanese art (literature, painting, sculpture, etc.).

The third part of the book ('Art Masters') contains short monographs on Japanese masters in the history of Japanese art and culture: Zeami Moto, the creator of "No" theatre; Hokusai, the master of woodblock printing; Yasunai Kawabata and Mishima Yukio, the writers; and the graphic designer, Tanaka Ikko.

Calza’s groundbreaking and insightful text is accompanied by 150 colour images of a great variety of examples from Japanese art and culture.

Contents and sections:

Irregular Beauty

 - Japan Style
 - Tea and the Aestetics of the Undefined
 - Images of Emptiness
 - The Seductiveness of Impermanence
 - Eccentric? No, Extraordinary
 - The Secret Message of No
 - Tears of the Mask
 - The Colours of Darkness
 - nterlude: Small but Great

The Feeling of Nature

 - The Harmony of Things
 - An Intimate Perception of Reality
 - The Dragon in Tranquillity
 - Nature's Magnificence
 - Nature and Beauty in the Floating World
 - Interlude: Eating with the Eyes

Masters of Art

 - Zeami: The Flower in the Demon
 - Hokusai: The Old Man Mad about Painting
 - Kawabata: The Power of the Ethereal
 - Mishima: When Will You Kill Yourself, Master?
 - Ikko: A Flash of Light

Glossary
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Index

Ikko Tanaka (born in 1930) is one of the established masters of Japanese graphic design. His work draws together influences from East and West, acknowledging the vocabulary of European Modernism while remaining characteristically Japanese. Inspired by sources as diverse as traditional Japanese illustration techniques and his passion for American jazz, he is renowned for numerous cultural posters and programmes for theatre and ballet, many for Kanze Noh Drama.

This work examines Tanaka's entire career, encompassing graphic design and art direction, editorial and interior design. The book is structured into four chapters, each addressing a different aspect of Tanaka's career and a concluding section comprises a critical anthology with contributions from commentators on contemporary graphic design.

Following an introduction by Gian Carlo Calza, the book is structured in four chapters: Japanese Style, Typography, Invitation to Theatre, and Art and Communication Today, each of which addresses a different aspect of Tanaka's momentous career. The concluding section comprises a critical anthology, with contributions from numerous leading commentators on contemporary graphic design, together with an extensive bibliography.

About the Author:

Gian Carlo Calza is Professor of East Asian Art History at the University of Venice and Director of the International Hokusai Research Centre in Milan. He is the author of many books and articles on Japanese art, including Hokusai, also published by Phaidon.