1880–1921
Hashiguchi Goyō橋口五葉
Goyō was the perfectionist of the new print: a Tokyo art-school graduate who designed barely more than a dozen prints before dying at forty — and set the standard for all of shin-hanga with them. His women, drawn from life and printed on grounds of mica and ground shell, are the movement’s Utamaro: monumental, modern, and entirely of the workshop tradition.
The workshop
After one print with Watanabe Shōzaburō (Bathing, 1915), Goyō took the publisher’s role himself — hiring carvers and printers to his own exacting direction. Every design was published by 1921; his whole œuvre is clear.
