Biography
Junko Hanahara (born 1958, Osaka) is a Japanese woodcut printmaker with a sustained practice based in Osaka. Her selection in the 68th CWAJ Print Show in 2025 with 'Another Morning Again' (今日も朝から), a 33 × 44 cm woodcut, places her within the cohort of established Japanese woodblock artists circulating through the principal Tokyo-area juried exhibition channels in the mid-2020s and working in the Kansai-region woodcut tradition.
Hanahara trained under Akira Kurosaki (1937-2019) at NHK Culture Center. Kurosaki was one of the most internationally significant Japanese woodblock printmakers of the late twentieth century — a Kyoto Seika University professor, a sustained advocate for the mokuhanga (water-based woodblock) tradition through international workshops, a founding figure behind the International Mokuhanga Conference framework, and the maker of a body of personal work that fused traditional water-based woodblock technique with abstract composition. His NHK Culture Center teaching was a continuing-education channel through which working artists could access advanced woodblock instruction outside the formal university degree system.
Affiliation with the Kurosaki teaching line situates Hanahara within a documented international-mokuhanga pedagogical tradition that has shaped the technical and aesthetic profile of contemporary Japanese woodcut.
Hanahara is a member of the Japan Print Association (Nihon Hanga Kyokai), the principal national organization for Japanese contemporary printmakers, founded in 1931. Membership is competitive and is a standard credential for working Japanese printmakers operating across all media.
Her chosen medium is woodcut — specifically the mokuhanga tradition transmitted through Kurosaki's teaching. The 33 × 44 cm sheet of 'Another Morning Again' is a moderate-format woodcut, requiring multiple registered blocks for its colored composition. Its title (今日も朝から, kyo mo asa kara, roughly 'again from the morning') draws on the texture of everyday routine. The CWAJ catalog assigned the work Print No. 025 in the 68th edition.
Detailed biographical records beyond the CWAJ Print Show entry — Hanahara's broader exhibition history, gallery representation, and museum holdings — are not currently surfaced through public-facing English-language channels.
Key Facts
- Active Period
- 1958
- Nationality
- 🇯🇵Japan
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
- Works Indexed
- 1
Frequently Asked Questions
Junko Hanahara (born 1958, Osaka) is a Japanese woodcut printmaker with a sustained practice based in Osaka. Her selection in the 68th CWAJ Print Show in 2025 with 'Another Morning Again' (今日も朝から), a 33 × 44 cm woodcut, places her within the cohort of established Japanese woodblock artists circulating through the principal Tokyo-area juried exhibition channels in the mid-2020s and working in the Kansai-region woodcut tradition.
Junko Hanahara was active born in 1958. They were associated with the Contemporary Mokuhanga movement.
Junko Hanahara's work was shaped by the Contemporary Mokuhanga tradition in Japanese woodblock printmaking. Contemporary Mokuhanga: Contemporary mokuhanga (literally "wood-block print") encompasses artists working from approximately 1970 to the present who continue or reinvent traditional Japanese woodblock printing techniques.