Maekawa Senpan Hot Springs

Senpan Maekawa (1888 - 1960) was a Japanese woodblock printer associated with the sosaku hanga "creative prints" movement. Maekawa Senpan was born in Kyoto, He was the son of a shopkeeper, the younger brother of a minor print-artist, Asaga Manjiro (1885-1965). He studied oil painting at the Kansai Bijutsuin in Kyoto and moved to Tokyo in 1911 where he began his long career as a cartoonist on the magazine 'Tokyo Puck'. Maekawa Senpan became famous as a caricaturist, working for the newspapers Yomiuri Shimbun, Kokumin shinbun, and the satirical magazine Tokyo pakku In 1928 he joined with seven other sosaku hanga artists to work on the 100 Views of New Tokyo series, to which he contributed twelve prints, which are all included here. Senpan Maekawa's most famous series of prints is the Hanga yokusen fu ("Hot Spring Notes") produced from 1941 to 1959. The series depicts a variety of onsen ("hot springs") from around Japan and was published in five volumes of twenty prints each. Some of which are included here. The authors have collected information on the various onsen.