"Japan is the land of the print. The vibrancy and timelessness of Sharaku and Utamaro, of Hokusai and Hiroshige - the art of ukiyo-e - underlies the vitality and creativity of the modern print medium, and is the bedrock from which the print of today has risen forth to become one of the major and most widely acclaimed modern arts of Japan. Yet the most exciting aspect of the contemporary Japanese print is that it is not an attempt to revive the ideas and techniques of history, and is not an empty echo of Western fashions in art: it is a vital, new movement whose force is the pure creativity of the artist, it is fully Japanese and at the same time international. This freedom of the modern print in Japan - which is unfettered by the limitations seen in the worlds of modern Japanese painting and sculpture - lies behind the vigor, explosive activity and excellence of this medium during the last fifteen years. This is the first book in English to present the full range and variety of the Japanese print of the last decade and a half. The contemporary print artists, represented in forty-seven color and one hundred fifty gravure plates, range from the veterans of today's print world - the men who first launched the modern print movement in Japan - to the brilliant youngsters, barely out of art college, who promise so much for the future. The prints extend from realistic, traditional Japanese themes to the most abstract probings into the contemporary world and mind. The text, written by Michiaki Kawakita, one of the foremost Japanese specialists on the modern art of Japan, is a penetrating analysis of the development and content of the modern Japanese print, and of the factors that have made this art form such an indisputed international success. Illuminating captions accompany the plates, and concise biographical notes are included as additional information for the collector and connoisseur." --