Hirokuni Aizawa

Hirokuni Aizawa (born 1946, Tochigi Prefecture) is a self-taught Japanese woodcut printmaker with a sustained practice based in Tochigi Prefecture. His selection in the 68th CWAJ Print Show in 2025 with 'Poem of Twilight 11,' a 35 × 61 cm woodcut, places him within the senior generation of regional Japanese woodblock artists working in the long tradition of Japanese landscape print.

Aizawa is one of a relatively small group of self-taught working artists circulating through the CWAJ Print Show channel — most CWAJ-selected artists pass through the formal university-trained pipeline at Tama Art University, Musashino Art University, Tokyo University of the Arts, Kyoto City University of Arts, or the regional public art universities. Self-taught practice in Japanese contemporary print is more common in the senior generation of artists who came to printmaking outside the postwar art-school expansion, and Aizawa's autodidact status places him within a distinctive line of regional Japanese printmakers whose technical formation came through workshop attendance, regional print society participation, and direct study of historical and contemporary models.

Aizawa is a member of the Tochigi Prefectural Print Association, the principal regional print society of Tochigi Prefecture. Tochigi-area printmaking has a documented tradition rooted in the prewar work of senior figures associated with the Sosaku-hanga (creative print) movement, and the Tochigi Prefectural Print Association continues to function as a regional showcase and professional-development network for working printmakers operating outside the Tokyo metropolitan exhibition channels.

The 'Poem of Twilight' series numbering — Poem of Twilight 11 implies at least ten prior installments — suggests a sustained thematic project running across multiple editions. The title evokes the long Japanese poetic tradition of evening landscape contemplation, running from the classical waka and haiku forms through the Edo-period landscape print tradition of Hiroshige's twilight scenes to the contemporary print tradition that includes serialized landscape work as a principal genre. The 35 × 61 cm horizontal sheet size is consistent with the panoramic landscape format characteristic of Japanese landscape print.

The CWAJ catalog selected 'Poem of Twilight 11' for the 2025 online gallery presentation in the 68th edition. Aizawa's continued participation in the CWAJ Print Show — at age 79 in 2025 — confirms his sustained engagement with the medium across decades.

Further biographical detail beyond the CWAJ Print Show entry — Aizawa's broader exhibition history, the full extent of the 'Poem of Twilight' series, gallery representation, and earlier work — is not currently surfaced through the public-facing English-language channels. Tochigi Prefectural Print Association exhibition records and Japanese-language sources covering self-taught regional Japanese woodcut artists would be the principal next-step research targets for extending this bio.