12 The Modern Soul of Sōsaku Hanga The Art of Nishida Tadashige

Chapter about Nishida Tadashige

1. 12 The Modern Soul of Sōsaku Hanga: The
Art of Nishida Tadashige
Moshu Marandengö
Introduction
The Japanese woodblock print, known as mokuhanga, holds a
distinguished and singular position within the history of global art. Its
heritage is dual-faceted: it is at once the primary visual record of the lively,
transient culture of Edo-period Japan—capturing the "floating world"
(ukiyo) of performers, beauties, and celebrated landscapes—and also a
testament to an artistic and philosophical lineage marked by continuous
reinvention. Tracing its development from a commercial craft based on
collaboration to a modern medium for individual expression is crucial for
appreciating the work of its current masters. Among contemporary Japanese
printmakers, few bridge the gap between heritage and globalism with the
poised assurance of Nishida Tadashige (b. 1942). While the great artists of
the Edo period are well-known to enthusiasts, Tadashige's work signifies the
medium's progression into the 20th and 21st centuries. His art, especially his
renowned images of cats and landscapes, channels the graphic wit and
elegance of his forerunners through a uniquely modern and international
perspective.
Originating from China around the eighth century, the technique of
woodblock printing was first employed in Japan for the sacred task of
replicating Buddhist scriptures and icons. It was not until the major societal
transformations of the Edo period (1603-1868) that mokuhanga truly
flourished as a vital secular art. The creation of ukiyo-e, or "pictures of the
floating world," operated as an advanced commercial venture structured
around the collaborative hanmoto system. This production model involved
four key roles: it was initiated by the publisher (hanmoto), who developed
the concept and financed the project; followed by the artist (eshi), who
supplied the master drawing; then a master carver (horishi), who
painstakingly transferred the design to woodblocks; and finally, a talented
printer (surishi), who applied pigments to the blocks and transferred the
image to fine, dampened paper. Despite yielding works of extraordinary
beauty, this process designated the prints as a form of commercial craft
rather than "high art." The art form's prominence began to wane with the
swift modernization of the Meiji Restoration in 1868; paradoxically, its
decline in Japan coincided with its enthusiastic reception in the West, where
its dynamic designs had a profound impact on the Impressionist and
Post-Impressionist movements.
DOI: 10.4324/989003112435-12

2. 178
Moshu Marandengö
Nagai Kafū and Fair-Weather Clogs: Impacts of Paris and Tokyo
In the early 20th century, Japanese printmaking fractured into two
competing philosophies. The first, Shin Hanga ("New Prints"), sought to
revive and modernize the collaborative hanmoto system, combining the
technical perfection of the old masters with a modern aesthetic sensibility,
often catering to a growing Western market. Emerging in opposition was
Sōsaku Hanga ("Creative Prints"), a revolutionary movement that
fundamentally challenged tradition. Its philosophy was encapsulated in the
creed of jiga (self-drawn), jikoku (self-carved), and jizuri (self-printed). This
principle championed the artist as a sole, autonomous creator, directly
engaged with every stage of the process. Influenced by Western ideals of
artistic originality, sōsaku hanga artists positioned themselves as modernists,
emphasizing personal expression and the unique marks of the creative
process as integral to the artwork's value. After struggling for recognition,
the movement found a new audience during the post-war American
Occupation, where patrons, guided by a desire to promote "democratic art,"
launched it onto the global stage.
It was into this new reality—where a once avant-garde circle had helped
create a thriving international art market—that Nishida Tadashige emerged.
Born on Amami Ōshima Island in Kagoshima prefecture, Tadashige began
his career not as a printmaker, but as a painter. After studying at Chiba
University, he gained recognition for his oil paintings in the 1960s, even
winning a Gold Prize at the prestigious Nika Exhibition. His post-graduate
studies in Europe and the United States exposed him to a breadth of Western
art styles, which would prove formative. Upon his return to Japan,
Tadashige shifted his focus entirely, moving from oil painting to the
woodblock print. This was not a simple change of medium, but a
philosophical realignment. He fully embraced the principles of the Sōsaku
hanga movement, taking complete control of the artistic process. For
Tadashige, this meant synthesizing the traditional Japanese methods he had
learned with the modern aesthetics he had absorbed abroad.
His work is immediately recognizable. Using simplified graphic forms
and bold, flat fields of saturated colour, he transforms the domestic cat into a
modern icon. The backgrounds are often vast, unadorned spaces rendered in
shimmering gold, silver, or mica leaf. This deliberate use of negative space
is not merely decorative; it is an active field, a contemplative arena that
forces the viewer’s attention onto the solitary, self-possessed animal. This
aesthetic strategy finds its roots in the fundamental Japanese
religio-aesthetic paradigm of Ma (間). At its most basic, Ma means an
interval or a gap—the space between two walls that constitutes a room, or
the pause between two musical notes that creates rhythm. The character
itself is a potent visual metaphor, depicting the sun shining through a gate,
suggesting that a deeper reality is revealed through the interval.

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Crucially, Ma collapses the fixed Western concepts of space and time into
an active, energized "space-time," a pregnant nothingness essential for
being. This sensitivity to the interval, rooted in the core tenets of Shinto,
Taoism, and Zen Buddhism, pervades traditional Japanese arts. In Nishida’s
prints, the vast backgrounds function as active fields of Ma. By stripping
away all narrative detail and domestic clutter, he creates an abstract space of
pure dwelling. In this minimalist environment, the cat is not an accessory to
a human-centered story; it is the emotional and existential focal point. Its
solitary presence fills the aesthetic and emotional void of the composition, a
strategy that reflects a significant sociological shift in post-war Japan, where
urbanization and changing family structures transformed the domestic pet
into an integral companion.
This brings us to the most powerful element of his work: the gaze. In
iconic works like Black Cat Looking Back, the animal arrests its movement
to fix the viewer with a direct, piercing stare. Its eyes, often rendered in
brilliant, reflective pigments, become points of confrontational light. This is
not the passive gaze of an object to be looked at; it is an active, reciprocal
seeing that places the viewer in the position of being seen. The print
becomes a stage for an existential event: the silent, unmediated encounter
between a human consciousness and a non-human Other. In another work, a
cat sits with its back to us, gazing out at an unseen world, occupying the
threshold—a literal Ma—between the interior and the exterior. Through this
masterful manipulation of space and gaze, Nishida elevates the decorative
cat portrait into a profound meditation on dwelling, solitude, and the
mystery of consciousness itself.
While his adherence to the sōsaku hanga ethos is clear, Tadashige’s work
also possesses a Pop Art sensibility that has brought him significant
commercial success, from calendars for Mitsubishi Bank to solo exhibitions
in Tokyo, Paris, and New York. This has led some to question whether his
work is a "serious" continuation of the expressive project of early sōsaku
hanga, or a commercialized, "Pop" iteration that capitalizes on a popular
motif. The answer lies in seeing this development not as a betrayal of the
movement, but as its logical culmination. The very patronage that elevated
sōsaku hanga created a market with specific tastes for accessible, modern,
and aesthetically pleasing objects that were nonetheless identifiably
"Japanese." Nishida masterfully adapted the sōsaku hanga ethos to this new
reality: he maintains absolute artistic control over the creative process while
producing work that thrives in the commercial gallery system that had come
to define the post-war print world. His prints are a testament to the enduring
power of a traditional craft to reinvent itself, proving that the soul of the
Japanese print continues to evolve in the hands of its modern masters.