HIRATSUKA Un'ichi (1895-1997)
Hiratsuka's daughter, Keiko Hiratsuka Moore, has said that her father considered the dating and numbering of his prints to be a nuisance, a practice expected by western collectors, but not one that was compatible with his own views. At times, Hiratsuka, perhaps mischievously, randomly numbered some impressions or made up the size of editions. Thus we are faced with the possibility that impressions of Hiratsuka's prints may occasionally have misleading edition numbers. She also reports that typically her father rarely made more than a dozen or so of most of his designs. In contrast, Oliver Statler, who interviewed Hiratsuka, wrote in the mid-1950s that Hiratsuka's editions typically ran between 30 and 50 impressions. There are certainly known exceptions, such as one image of Saint Nichiren, intended for an edition of 10,000 in the manner of devotional Buddhist images (Hiratsuka was a serious collector of old Buddhist prints, some dating from the late Heian period, 898-1185), but reaching more like 1,475 impressions by Hiratsuka's death. At the opposite end of the range, Hiratsuka's design of the Lincoln Memorial to commemorate the 1975 visit to the U.S. of the emperor and empress of Japan was made in a single impression for the exclusive possession of the Imperial household. It appears that Hiratsuka often printed only as many copies of his works as were needed or requested over the years, so more research is needed to sort out the number of extant impressions for each of Hiratsuka's designs.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Hiratsuka Un'ichi (•½’ˉ^ˆê), one of the pre-eminent figures in the sosaku hanga movement, was born in Matsue, Honshû. In 1913 he met the artist
Ishii Hakutei (1882-1958), a western-style painter and printmaker who had published the first sosaku hanga print (Yamamoto Kanae's
"Fisherman") in the magazine Myôjô in 1904. Ishii admired Hiratsuka's painting, and in 1915 the younger
artist moved to Tokyo to continue his study with Ishii, who urged him to learn block carving and printing. He did so for about six months
with Igami Bonkotsu (1875-1933), becoming the best-trained block carver in the sosaku hanga movement. Hiratsuka exhibited his first prints
in 1916 at an exhibition of the independent Nika-kai ("Second Division Society"), and by the 1920s his reputation in the world
of printmaking was considerable. It is likely that Hiratsuka had some influence upon nearly every important sosaku hanga artist. He taught
sessions on woodblock printing in various parts of Japan, inspiring, among many students, the great 
Hiratsuka's grandfather was an architect who designed houses and temples, and his father was a shrine carpenter, so the artist was introduced to wood-working
and architecture early in his life. The figure on the top right depicts the Shôsôin at the Tôdai Temple in Nara, the famous 8th-century
repository of Imperial treasures. Printed in 1958, it is a large-format work measuring approximately 80 x 61 cm. Although he made full-color prints,
Hiratsuka believed that the combination of black and white had a special and challenging beauty, and to be successful using only these two colors an
artist had to capture the rhythm of line and mass. White was not merely negative space, but a value equal to black, and each color had to harmonize with
the other. In Hiratsuka's portrayal of the Shôsôin, the stark contrast of the bright white paper and dense black, achieved through multiple
printings, is complemented by a bold, receding perspective seen from a low vantage point. The overhanging roof runs right to the top edge of the image and
the massive wooden beams jut out in evenly spaced, rhythmical horizontals. The mass of architectural and garden detail is further energized by Hiratsuka's
characteristic carving, a technique he developed called tsukibori ("poking strokes") made with small square-end chisel (aisuki), rocking
the blade side to side in short strokes. This produced rough, jagged edges that he used in selected areas of the design (see the detail of the column on
the immediate right), which Hiratsuka believed gave his work power and substance.
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