Mizushima Nihofu

Mizushima Nihofu (水島爾保布, 1884–1958; his given name is also read Niou) was a Japanese painter, illustrator, and printmaker active in the Taishō and early Shōwa periods. Born in Tokyo in 1884, he trained in the Japanese-painting (nihonga) department of the Tokyo Art School — the forerunner of today's Tokyo University of the Arts — from which he graduated in 1909, studying under the painter and illustrator Kubota Kinsen. He went on to a wide-ranging career as a newspaper illustrator, joining the Osaka Asahi Shinbun in the 1910s, and was also active as a writer and essayist.

In the woodblock medium, Mizushima is best known as one of the several illustrator-artists who designed the Hanshin Meisho Zue (Pictures of Celebrated Places in Osaka and Kobe), a print series depicting scenes in and around the Osaka–Kobe region, produced in the mid-1910s. Prints by Mizushima are held in institutional collections including the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and the British Museum, and he is catalogued in Japan's national Dictionary of Artists (Art Platform Japan). Once documented largely through Japanese-language sources, he is now recognized as a versatile figure whose output bridged newspaper illustration, painting, and the print culture of early twentieth-century Japan.