Background
Noda Kyûho (野田九浦 1879-1971, real name Node Dôzo 野田道三) was born in Tokyo and studied under the Nihonga (Japanese style, 日本画) painter Terazaki Kôgyô (寺崎広業 1866-1919) and the highly influential yôga (Western-style painter) Viscount Kuroda Seiki (黒田清輝 1866-1924). In 1896-1897, Noda attended the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, where he acquired sufficient sketching ability to earn his living as an illustrator for the Osaka Asahi Shinbun newspaper, which he joined in 1907. In Osaka he produced book illustrations, including those for the novel Kôfu (The Miner, 坑夫) by Natsume Soseki (夏目漱石 1867-1916), and became a friend of the Nihonga painter and print artist Kitano Tsunetomi (北野恒富 1880-1947). Working at times with the publisher Kanao Tanejirô (金尾種次郎), he became a leading artist in the creative life of the city. He returned to Tokyo in 1917. Later in his career, he concentrated more and more on pure Nihonga painting, specializing in religious and historical subjects of China and Japan. After the Pacific War, he continued to live in the Tokyo area and was highly regarded in official artistic circles in Japan, winning awards at the fifth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and eleventh Bunten exhibitions (Monbushô Bijutsu Tenrankai, Ministry of Education Fine Arts Exhibition: 文部省美術展覧会)., the official salon held in Tokyo 1907-1918
The set titled Hanshin meisho zue (Pictures of celebrated places in Osaka and Kobe, 阪神名勝図絵), 1916) consists of thirty ôban-size views near or in Kobe and Osaka, plus a map in antique Japanese style showing the location of the scenes and a list of contents. Information specific to each design is also given. Hanshin meisho zue was first issued in a series of portfolios and then later as folding albums. Each of the portfolio covers has a small printed landscape by Akamatsu Rinsaku pasted to it. This set was one of the ambitiously illustrated travel-books produced by the publisher Kanao Tanejirô under his Bun'endô imprint (Kanao Bun'endô 金尾文淵堂), at that time based in Tokyo. Here he used five artists, all employed as illustrators by the Osaka "Asahi Shinbun" newspaper. The five artists were Noda Kyûho (野田九浦 1879-1971), Akamatsu Rinsaku (赤松麟作 1878-1953), Hata Tsuneharu (1883-1944 幡恒春), Mizushima Nihofu (水島爾保布 sometimes called Nihou, 1884-1958) and Nagai Hyosai (永井瓢齊 1882-1945). All the designs were carved by Okura Hanbei (大倉半兵衛; d.1925) and printed by Nishimura Kumakichi II (西村熊吉), the latter working frequently with Bun'endô.
Mitchell (ref. below, p. 118) concluded that, "the Hanshin prints appear to be the very first of all shin hanga landscapes," preceding by two years the first landscapes issued by the publisher Watanabe Shôzaburô (渡辺庄三郎 1885-1962). Jack Hillier (ref. below) notes that the five artists who contributed to the series seemed less influenced by early Japanese print artists than by "western masters who adopted the Japanese techniques of print-making - for instance, Henri Riviere or P.A. Isaac in France." Helen Merritt suggests that the fluid brushwork found in the prints compares with that of the Maruyama-Shijô painterly tradition.
Complete sets mounted in albums can be found in the collections of The British Museum; the Smithsonian Museum of Asian Art (former Pulverer Collection); Ashiya City Museum; and Kobe City Museum.
Design
Sanda (三田) is a city located in Hyôgo Prefecture, about 16 miles north of Kobe and 22 miles northwest of Osaka. In Noda's time, Sanda ("Three rice fields") was a typical farming village with rural scenery. Today, however, due to large-scale housing developments and electrification of the Fukuchiyama railway line, Sanda has become a satellite city of Osaka and Kobe.
Noda's view of Sanda is distinguished by the fallen snow, printed in opaque white pigment, which covers some of the foreground hill, rests upon a crowded grouping of more than twenty houses, and crowns the trees in the distance. Along the stone embankment and blue stream, four small blackbirds can be seen, and nested among the houses are five telephone poles. The white pigment as used here is unusual, sitting on top of the paper as much as being absorbed by it. This lends the composition a modern painterly appearance, which was quite uncommon in printmaking of the period. This woodcut stands apart from typical village scenes in the early Shin Hanga ("New Prints") period.
Prints from this series are rather scarce, and complete sets are rare.
References:
- Hillier, Jack: The Art of the Japanese Book. London: Sotheby's Publishing, 1987, Vol. II, pp. 1005-1008.
- Helen Merritt, Modern Japanese Woodblock Prints: The Early Years. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i press, 1990, pp. 33-35.
- Merritt and Yamada: Guide to Modern Japanese Woodblock Prints, 1900-1975. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1992, pp. 31.
- Mitchell, Charles H.: "Hanshin Meisho Zue: A Little-known Early Shin Hanga Series," in: Essays on Japanese Art Presented to Jack Hillier, 1982, London: Robert Sawyers Publishing, pp. 118-124.
Return to