Tanaka Kiyokichi

Tanaka Kyōkichi (田中恭吉, 1892-1915), whose given name also appears romanized as Kiyokichi, was a Japanese printmaker and poet and one of the earliest figures in the sōsaku-hanga ("creative print") movement. Born in Wakayama Prefecture in 1892, he studied Western-style painting at the Hakubakai (White Horse Society) institute under Nagahara Kōtarō before entering the Tokyo School of Fine Arts in 1911. It was in these years that he met the artists Fujimori Shizuo and Onchi Kōshirō, kindred spirits who shared his conviction that a woodblock print could be a vehicle for personal, self-expressive art rather than reproductive craft.

Together the three friends produced Tsukuhae (月映), a small magazine of original prints and poetry; seven issues appeared between September 1914 and November 1915, and it was Tanaka who proposed the title. The venture placed him among the pioneers of the creative-print ideal, though his career was tragically short. He had contracted tuberculosis and by 1914 had returned to his native Wakayama, where he went on making prints and writing poetry even as his health failed. In the spring of 1915 the poet Hagiwara Sakutarō asked him to provide images for the collection that became Tsuki ni Hoeru (Howling at the Moon); too ill to cut new blocks, Tanaka contributed drawings. He died on 23 October 1915 at the age of twenty-three, leaving a small but deeply personal body of work.