About Hanga
Our Mission
Hanga exists to make the world of Japanese woodblock prints accessible to everyone — from first-time viewers discovering Hokusai's Great Wave to experienced collectors tracking auction markets for rare Hasui impressions.
The Japanese word hanga (版画) means “print” — it encompasses the full spectrum of Japanese printmaking, from Edo-period ukiyo-e to the shin-hanga revival of the early twentieth century, the artist-driven sosaku-hanga movement, and contemporary mokuhanga practitioners working today. Our platform brings these traditions together in one place, letting you browse artists, explore artworks, learn techniques, and build a personal collection.
What You'll Find Here
Hanga is a reference platform and discovery tool, not a dealer or auction house. We don't sell prints — we help you understand them.
- 1,055 artists with biographies, career timelines, and links to museum collections worldwide
- 26,818 artworks with high-resolution images sourced from open-access museum collections, each with descriptions, technique details, and subject tags
- 229 print series — from Hokusai's Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji to Hiroshige's One Hundred Famous Views of Edo — with every print in order
- 53 glossary terms explaining techniques like bokashi and karazuri, formats, materials, and artistic concepts
- Marketplace tracking that aggregates listings from major dealers so you can compare prices and find prints for sale
- Personal collections — rate prints, save favorites, and build a gallery of works you love or want to acquire
Editorial Standards
Every artist biography, artwork description, and glossary definition on Hanga is researched and written with care. Our content is informed by published scholarship, museum records, and primary sources. We cross-reference multiple institutions before attributing dates, titles, or biographical details.
Where information is uncertain or contested by scholars — particularly for artists from the Edo and Meiji periods, where records are fragmentary — we note the ambiguity rather than asserting a single version as fact. Print titles follow the conventions used by the holding museum, with alternate titles and Japanese readings included where known.
We link to authoritative external sources (Wikipedia, museum collection pages, scholarly databases) so readers can verify claims and explore further. Every artist page includes links to the museum collections that hold their work.
Image Sources & Licensing
All artwork images on Hanga come from open-access museum collections and public domain sources. We do not host copyrighted images or images behind paywalls. Our primary sources include:
- Art Institute of Chicago — CC0 open-access images served via the IIIF standard
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art — CC0 public domain images
- Cleveland Museum of Art — CC0 open-access program
- Library of Congress — free-to-use public domain images
- Wikimedia Commons — freely licensed media
Images are served directly from these institutional servers — we link to the source, not re-host copies. Each artwork page credits the holding institution and links to the original museum record where available.
Who Builds Hanga
Hanga is an independent project built by a small team of collectors and technologists who believe Japanese printmaking deserves better online resources. Most existing sites are either dealer storefronts with commercial bias, museum databases with terrible search experiences, or image archives with no editorial context. We set out to build the resource we wished existed when we started collecting.
The platform is free to use and does not require an account to browse. Creating an account unlocks personal features like rating prints, building collections, and tracking marketplace listings.
Get in Touch
Have a question, correction, or suggestion? We welcome feedback from collectors, scholars, and printmaking enthusiasts. If you've spotted an error in an artist biography or artwork attribution, or if you have a print you think should be in our database, we'd love to hear from you.
Reach us at hello@myhanga.com