YAMAGUCHI Gen (山口源)

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Yamaguchi Gen (山口源) was born in Fuji City (Shizuoka Prefecture). He spent his youth in Tokyo, and thought for a time about becoming a writer, but after his family moved to Taiwan in 1914 (where they had prosperous beer and sake breweries), he had a chance encounter with Fujimori Shizuo (藤森静雄 1891–1943), an oil painter, sôsaku hanga artist, and friend of Onchi Kôshirô. Yamaguchi assisted Fujimori in collecting butterflies, while Fujimori introduced Yamaguchi to printmaking. Back in Japan, in 1932, Yamaguchi fell in with an anti-materialist group called Itto-en, which led him to renounce (for a time) financial support from his family and live an ascetic life. He survived with menial jobs, going house to house and offering to do chores. Serendipitously, he came to Onchi's home. As the Second World War approached, Yamaguchi spent time as an itinerant painter. He was a Christian (a legacy of childhood Sunday school taught by a missionary) and political liberal (though not a Communist), and was very much opposed to the militarism taking over Japan. For a few years, around 1935–37, he disappeared from the art scene, and may have been an activist in the anti-militarist underground.

Yamaguchi became an ardent admirer of Onchi Kôshirô and also befriended other sôsaku hanga artists (especially Azechi Umetarô, Maeda Masao, and Sekino Jun'ichirô). Self-taught, Yamaguchi once again accepted his family's support while he sketched and made prints. He was his own artist, independent and adventurous. A chance meeting with the printmaker Umetaro Azechi prompted Yamaguchi to become more active in making hanga, and in 1939 he became one of the original members in Onchi's Ichimoku-kai (First Thursday Society), participating in the group's informal monthly meetings held at Onchi's house (Yamaguchi lived nearby, as did Sekino Jun'ichirô) and contributing to all six of the portfolios issued by the group (1944, 1946-50). The following year, Yamaguchi submitted representational prints to the Kokugakai (National Picture Association: 国画会) and other exhibitions. After the war, he focused on non-representational works, including "object prints," using cardboard, netting, leaves, grass, string, cloth, and other found-objects in a style akin to Onchi's abstractions. He and Onchi shared some of the same attitudes toward printmaking, especially in regard to experimental techniques. Yamaguchi said, for example, that at about the same time, he and Onchi separately began making prints with media other than woodblocks.

Yamaguchi followed his own instincts, experimenting constantly and manipulating his materials and images as he sought to achieve satisfying results. One design that varies substantially from impression to impression is Yamaguchi's "Deep attachment" (想慕) from 1957. Certain prominent early Western collectors of Yamaguchi's prints declared this design "subtle and perfect" (Michener) and "a design in which every element seems necessary and in exactly the right place" (Statler). Michener further wrote, "When Yamaguchi Gen was in the midst of making the print ... he wrote me a letter that summarizes the problems which have always beset Japanese print artists: 'For many years I have been working at my art and at times I have not had the courage to go ahead. I have had to watch the work done by men like me ignored, abused, and left unsold. Some critics avoid us because we do not work in the old style, and others say harsh things because we do not copy old Japanese themes. It has been a very hard life indeed to bear such indifference and recently I have often thought about stopping. But the great interest you and Mr. Statler have shown in my work makes me believe that I am doing right. So I keep working'. Michener added, "... the print that came out of the spirit of that letter ... is a marvelous, poetic thing, and I would be gratified beyond expression if I thought that anything I had said had encouraged a man to stay at such work."

The above text is taken from Fiorillo: https://viewingjapaneseprints.net/texts/sosaku_hanga/yamaguchi_gen.html.

Design:

The version of Deep Attachment 想慕 offered here is bold and dramatic. Strong, contrasting colors are used throughout the image and prominent marks from baren-sujizuri (baren traces printing), are an important design element as they swirl about the central background. The driftwood form is printed with heavy consistency in the dark values (above right), filling in much of the detail in the form. The image is lyrical, ethereal, and full of longing. There is lightness and air. Graphically, the placement of the red shape is just right, as is the gray form near the lower left. The baren-tsuji marks are quite effective in the more dramatic printings.

References

• Catalogue of Collections [Modern Prints]: The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (Tokyo kokuritsu kindai bijutsukan shozô-hin mokuroku, 東京国立近代美術館所蔵品目録). 1993.
• Retrospective Exhibition of Gen Yamaguchi, 100th Anniversary of the Artist's Birth; Art in Shizuoka No. 8; Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art (Shizuoka Kenritsu Bijutsukan: 静岡県立美術館), 1998.
• Jenkins, Donald: Images of a Changing world: Japanese Prints of the Twentieth Century. Portland Art Museum, 1983.
• Kawakita, Michiaki: Contemporary Japanese Prints. Tokyo: Kodansha, 1967.
• Michener, James: Japanese Prints: From the Early Masters to the Modern. Rutland, VT: Tuttle, 1959, pp. 238-239, 280; no. 245
• Petit, Gaston: 44 Modern Japanese Print Artists. Tokyo: Kodansha, 1973; vol. 2, pp. 174-181, nos. C78-C80, 235-240; and descriptive list of plates, pp. 53-54.
• Sakai, Tetsuo et al.: Mô hitotsu no Nihon bijutsushi kin gendai hanga no meisaku 2020 (Another History of Japanese Art: Masterpieces of Modern and Contemporary Prints 2020: もうひとつの日本美術史近現代版画の名作2020). Fukushima Prefectural Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art, Wakayama, 2020, p. 145.
• Statler, Oliver: Modern Japanese Prints: An Art Reborn. Rutland & Tokyo: Tuttle, 1956, pp. 154-158 and 200-201; color plate facing p. 154; b/w figures 88-89.
• Yoshida, Tôshi and Yuki, Rei: Japanese Print Making. Rutland & Tokyo: Tuttle, 1966, pp. 150-155 and color plate 11 (p. 95).