Shin-hanga

Shin-hanga (新版画?, lit. "new prints", "new woodcut (block) prints") was an art movement in early 20th-century Japan, during the Taishō and Shōwa periods, that revitalized traditional ukiyo-e art rooted in the Edo and Meiji periods (17th–19th century). It maintained the traditional ukiyo-e collaborative system (hanmoto system) where the artist, carver, printer, and publisher engaged in division of labor, as opposed to the sōsaku-hanga (creative prints) movement which advocated the principles of "self-drawn" (jiga), "self-carved" (jikoku) and "self-printed" (jizuri), according to which the artist, with the desire of expressing the self, is the sole creator of art.

The term shin-hanga was coined in 1915 by Watanabe Shōzaburō (1885-1962), the most important publisher of shin-hanga, with the aim of differentiating shin-hanga from the commercial mass art that ukiyo-e had been, though it was driven largely by exports to the United States. The movement flourished from around 1915 to 1942, though it resumed briefly from 1946 through the 1950s. Inspired by European Impressionism, the artists incorporated Western elements such as the effects of light and the expression of individual moods, but focused on strictly traditional themes of landscapes (fukeiga), famous places (meishō), beautiful women (bijinga), kabuki actors (yakusha-e), and birds and flowers (kachōga).

Read more about Shin-hanga:  Shin-hanga Creative Peak: Early 1920s, Subject Matter and Technique, Shin-hanga Vs. Ukiyo-e, Shin-hanga Vs. Sōsaku-hanga, Decline of Shin-hanga, Notable Artists, Reference and Further Reading