Shiro Kasamatsu

Shiro Kasamatsu (笠松 紫浪, Kasamatsu Shirō, 11 January 1898, Tokyo – 14 June 1991) was a Japanese engraver and print maker trained in the Shin-Hanga and Sōsaku-Hanga styles of woodblock printing.

In front left side: Shiro Kasamatsu, right side Shōzaburō Watanabe. In the back from left: Moriyama, Kawase Hasui, collector Robert Muller and wife Inge, Itō Shinsui and his wife (1941)

Kasamatsu was born in Tokyo in 1898 and apprenticed at the age of 13 to Kaburagi Kiyokata (1878–1973), a traditional master of Bijin-ga, pictures of beautiful women. Kasamatsu however took an interest in landscape and was given the pseudonym Shiro by his teacher, which he used as a signature mark in his prints. Kasamatsu made woodblock prints for the publisher Shōzaburō Watanabe from 1919. Almost all the woodblocks were destroyed in a fire in Watanabe's print shop following the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. Around 50 prints were published by Watanabe by the late 1940s. Kasamatsu began to partner with Unsodo in Kyoto from the 1950s and produced over 100 prints by 1960. He also began to print and publish on his own in the Sōsaku-Hanga style. He produced nearly 80 Sōsaku-Hanga prints between 1955 and 1965.

• 
  The edge of Shinobazu pond during a foggy evening, 1932
• 
  The Large Lantern in the Kannon Temple in Asakusa, woodblock print, 1934
• 
  The hot springs of Shuzenji. Shuzenji onsen, 1937

External links

• The catalogue raisonné for Shiro Kasamatsu
• The Lavenberg Collection of Japanese Prints
• Print collection at ukiyo-e.org