Anyone Know Anything ABout..

[ThTx]

Japanese art prints? These (and one that the photo was too blurry) were brought back from Japan right after the WW II. Anyone know anything about something like this?

 

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[DCMatt]

Do some research on "Nishiki e". These may be woodblock prints. It's hard to tell without better pics.

A couple of things to note - they all seem to be signed by the same artist, although the characters in the signature are not distinctly Japanese. I can't read them but they almost look like stylized English letters - very curious but maybe not too unusual in American occupied Japan.

Also, in pic #4, the guy in the coolie hat looks distinctly Chinese. I can only read the last character on his "note". It is hiragana "mo" but it is written backwards. What's up with that?

Better pics will yield more info.

DCMatt

 

[DCMatt]

It just occured to me that the characters could be backwards because it is a woodblock print (reverse image) although you'd think the artist would allow for that...

Do some research on "Nishiki e". These may be woodblock prints. It's hard to tell without better pics.

A couple of things to note - they all seem to be signed by the same artist, although the characters in the signature are not distinctly Japanese. I can't read them but they almost look like stylized English letters - very curious but maybe not too unusual in American occupied Japan.

Also, in pic #4, the guy in the coolie hat looks distinctly Chinese. I can only read the last character on his "note". It is hiragana "mo" but it is written backwards. What's up with that?

Better pics will yield more info.

DCMatt

 

[sniffer]

I would find a museum curator, to determine if they're worth anything. a lot of those were made after WWII for the tourist trade

 

[ThTx]

I don't think these are for the tourist trade. They came back with a Marine in 1946.

Thanks for teh replies. I will start checking it out.

 

[AU24K]

DC Matt,
I was going to ask if they were litho. I never considered woodblock at first.
And, Yes, anyone capable of creating multiple blocks for each color needed to produce this quality of work certainly would have taken reverse imaging into account.

The printed characters really do not look like any Japanese characters I've ever seen. Maybe some other Island culture from that part of the world...

ThTx,
Look at it closely with a magnifyer and see if it has lots of different "color dots."

Best,
Scott