Gihachiro Okuyama

Gihachiro Okuyama (奥山 儀八郎, Okuyama Gihachirō; February 17, 1907 – October 1, 1981) was a 20th-century Japanese commercial artist and woodblock printmaker. He was a prolific artist of the shin-hanga and sōsaku-hanga styles. Okuyama is noted for his landscape prints, both in color and black-and-white, as well as his simple prints of scenes that interject elements of the modernization of Japan into an otherwise traditional view.

Biography

Gihachiro Okuyama was born in the city of Sagae, Yamagata, in the Tohoku region, on February 17, 1907. He began as a commercial artist, creating advertising art for many different companies; between 1928 and 1931 he produced around forty poster designs for the watercolour printer (surishi) Hidekichi Uchida, alongside commercial woodblock advertisements. He created successful commercial art for the Japan Wool Company and Nikka Whiskey. In 1931 he founded his own advertising company, the Tokyo Kōkoku Bijutsu Kyōkai, and the following year contributed prints to the series Dai Tokyo Hyakkei ("A Hundred Views of Greater Tokyo"). His son Gijin was born in Tokyo in 1934, at a time when rising pre-war tensions had already damaged the American market for Japanese goods, a situation that worsened during the Pacific War.

Okuyama studied printmaking with Gajin Kosaka beginning in 1923, as well as with noted artist Kendo Ishii, and began exhibiting prints with the Nihon Sosaku Hanga Association in 1927. In 1942 he joined Umetarō Azechi and Uichi Takayama in founding the Shin Hanga Kyōkai.