Jiro Inatsugu

Jiro Inatsugu (born 1934, Hyogo Prefecture) is a senior Japanese woodcut artist with a sustained practice in Hyogo, working in traditional and contemporary woodblock with a distinct focus on Japanese architectural subjects. His selection in the 68th CWAJ Print Show in 2025 with 'Traditional Townscape at Tondabayashi,' a 46 × 62 cm woodcut, places him among the most senior generation of working Japanese printmakers — born in the 1930s and still actively producing and exhibiting nine decades later.

Inatsugu trained under two figures in postwar Japanese woodblock practice: Kurosaki Akira (1937-2019) and Ichien Tatsuo. Kurosaki Akira was one of the most internationally significant Japanese woodblock printmakers of the late twentieth century, a professor (later professor emeritus) at Kyoto Seika University and a sustained advocate for the mokuhanga (water-based woodblock) tradition — active in international mokuhanga workshops and exhibitions, including as an honorary advisor to the International Mokuhanga Exhibition, and known for a body of personal work that fused traditional technique with abstract composition.

Inatsugu's work centers on Japanese architectural and townscape subjects. 'Traditional Townscape at Tondabayashi' refers to the historic Jinaimachi (temple-town) district of Tondabayashi City in Osaka Prefecture, an Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings (重要伝統的建造物群保存地区) preserving an Edo-period merchant townscape. The subject — a heritage architectural district — is consistent with the senior generation of Japanese woodblock artists who took the documentation and evocation of historic Japanese built environments as their principal motif. The 46 × 62 cm sheet is a moderate-large multi-block woodcut, requiring multiple registered blocks for the colored composition.

The CWAJ catalog assigned 'Traditional Townscape at Tondabayashi' Print No. 049 in the 68th edition. Inatsugu's continued participation in the CWAJ Print Show — at age 91 in 2025 — is unusual and confirms his sustained engagement with the medium across many decades. The CWAJ selection is the principal annual juried showcase of contemporary Japanese print, and senior artists' continued participation provides important continuity with the postwar woodblock generation that included Inatsugu's teachers.

Beyond his CWAJ Print Show entry and gallery listings, Inatsugu's fuller exhibition history and earlier career are not yet well documented in English-language sources; they would most likely be found in Japanese-language art references and Kansai-area exhibition records. His training under Kurosaki Akira and Ichien Tatsuo nonetheless places him within a documented teaching lineage of postwar Japanese woodblock practice.