Mizufune Rokushu

Mizufune Rokushu (水船六洲, 1912–1980) was a Japanese printmaker of the sosaku-hanga (creative print) movement, in which the artist designs, carves, and prints his own blocks rather than dividing the work among specialists. Trained first as a sculptor, he brought a strong sense of form and structure to his prints, which are predominantly abstract or semi-abstract in character.

Born in 1912 in Kure, in Hiroshima Prefecture, Mizufune studied sculpture at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, graduating in 1936. He learned the fundamentals of woodblock printmaking through the study group led by Hiratsuka Un'ichi, one of the pioneers of the creative-print movement. While still a young artist, he was among the founding members of the Shin Hanga Shudan (New Print Collective) in 1932, a creative-print group whose members included Ono Tadashige; it was later reorganized as the Zokei Hanga Kyokai.

For much of his life Mizufune worked as a schoolteacher, teaching art at Kanto Gakuin in Yokohama and later serving as principal of its primary school. He began to exhibit his prints seriously around 1955, and in 1959 he joined the Japan Print Association. His work was shown at the international print biennials held in Tokyo, and in 1961–62 he lived in the United States, spending time in Vermont.

Rather than the figural or landscape imagery of many of his contemporaries, Mizufune's prints reflect his sculptor's sensibility — strong, simplified forms, carefully balanced compositions, and a rich, opaque handling of color. His mature work carries a meditative, weathered quality that he associated with a Buddhist sense of "aware," the pathos of natural and time-worn things.

While he did not attain the international renown of sosaku-hanga figures such as Munakata Shiko, Saito Kiyoshi, or Maki Haku, Mizufune was an early and committed participant in the creative-print movement, and his prints remain of interest to collectors drawn to the broader circle of artists who sustained sosaku-hanga across the twentieth century.