Fusako Yoshikawa

Fusako Yoshikawa (born 1941, Nagoya) is a Japanese mokuhanga printmaker whose abstract, bold, dynamically composed multi-block woodblocks have built a sustained body of work across more than four decades of independent practice. Working from a studio base in Nagoya, she has been a regular figure in the Japan-UK print exchange community since 1999, when the Northern Print studio in Newcastle first exhibited her work as part of a Nagoya–Newcastle exchange.

Yoshikawa's pictorial vocabulary is committed to abstraction. Where most contemporary Japanese mokuhanga artists work in some representational mode — landscape, still life, figure, architecture — Yoshikawa's prints are built on shapes and rich colors arranged into dense, dynamic compositions whose mood is consistently joyful. The titles, when given, are usually descriptive single-word or short titles: 'Hiraku' (opening, 60 × 45 cm), 'Tsugine' (followed by a number), 'Natsu' (summer, followed by a number), 'Private' (followed by a number).

Her woodblock practice uses the multiple-block method — separate woodblocks for each color, registered carefully so that the composition resolves into a unified whole. The compositions are usually printed in saturated rather than pale color, with hand-pulled impressions on Japanese washi paper. Edition sizes are small but consistent. The result is a body of work that pairs the austerity of abstract composition with the warm tactile surface specific to traditional water-based mokuhanga.

Northern Print Studio in Newcastle, England, has represented her in the United Kingdom since 1999 and now offers more than fifty Yoshikawa prints in its online catalog. Her first solo UK exhibition since 2010 was presented by Northern Print from August to October 2023, marking the long continuity of her UK presence. She has also been represented through Hanga Ten in London, the principal UK contemporary Japanese print gallery, and through periodic exhibitions at the Watts Gallery (Compton, UK).

Within the contemporary Japanese mokuhanga field, Yoshikawa is one of the very small group of artists who have maintained a sustained UK presence over more than two decades. Most contemporary Japanese mokuhanga artists circulate primarily within Japan or in North America; the consistent Newcastle and London presence places Yoshikawa alongside artists like Kunio Kaneko, Kobayashi Keisei, and the late Iwami Reika in the generation of senior Japanese mokuhanga artists whose work has been actively introduced to UK audiences.