Kawanishi Yūzaburō

Following in the footsteps of his father the sosaku hanga printmaker Kawanishi Hide (1894-1965), Yūzaburō started studying woodblock print making with his father when he was eight years old. 

The third son in the family, he was born in Kobe in the Kansai area in 1923.  At the age of nineteen, his skill was such that he exhibited at the 11th Nihon Hanga Kyōkai (Japan Print Association) exhibition, winning a first prize, but it was not until he graduated from Kwansei Gakuin University in 1947, an education that was interrupted by the 1942 wartime Student Mobilization Order., that he became a full-time print maker.  After the death of his father in 1965, Yūzaburō was to go on to become a leader in the creative print genre (sosaku hanga) in the Kansai region. 

Kwansei Gakuin University and Kobe City

The artist had a life-long relationship with Kwansei Gakuin University with which he worked collaboratively to design a large number of promotional items, some of which are available through the school's online store.1  The main part of Yūzaburō's output, however, were landscapes and famous places of Japan, such as this collection's print IHL Cat. #1416 Himeji Castle 姫路城, and the 1971 series Eight Views of Osaka (Osaka hakkei).

Deeply engaged with the Kobe area, he received the Kobe City Prize of Culture in '85 and the Hyogo Prefecture Prize of Culture in '95.  He hosted museum visits in his studio and in 2010 presented the Kobe City Museum with over 900 of his works, 154 of which were exhibited that same year.  He was instrumental in bringing his father's collection of works, "The Kawanishi Hide Collection" including prints by Kawanishi Hide himself, Onchi Kōshirō (1891-1955) and Kawakami Sumio (1895-1972), with whom Kawanishi socialized, and over 300 works by, and paraphernalia about, the artist Takehisa Yumeji (1884-1934).2