Biography
Rika Saito (born 1977, Tokyo) is a Japanese woodcut printmaker whose practice has developed through a Tokyo art-school lineage that ran from Joshibi University of Art and Design to the Tokyo University of the Arts (Geidai). She continues to live and work in Tokyo, where she is a regular participant in the College Women's Association of Japan (CWAJ) Print Show — the principal annual showcase of contemporary Japanese printmaking — and is a member of the Japan Print Society and the Japan Printmakers Association.
Saito's training began at Joshibi University of Art and Design, the principal women's art university in Japan and one of the historically most active institutions in printmaking education. She continued her studies at the Tokyo University of the Arts (Geidai) graduate program, completing the formal course of study at the country's flagship art university for printmaking. The combination — Joshibi for undergraduate, Geidai for graduate — is a relatively common path for Japanese women printmakers of her generation, and the technical training she received in woodblock cutting at both institutions shapes the technical core of her mature practice.
Her 2024 print 'Near and Far #1' — selected for the 68th CWAJ Print Show in 2025 — is a square 53 × 53 cm woodcut composition. The series numbering (#1) suggests an ongoing exploration of the title's spatial proposition: the way that subjects in the same scene can be both close to the viewer and distant from one another. The square format is characteristic of contemporary Japanese woodcut, where the format choice often signals an interest in formal compositional balance over the directional thrust of a vertical or horizontal sheet.
Within the contemporary Japanese print field, Saito belongs to the steady-producing Tokyo woodcut cohort whose practice is anchored in the CWAJ Print Show's annual cycle. The CWAJ Print Show, held each October at the Tokyo American Club since 1956, is the principal selection-juried print exhibition in Japan, and selection for it is the standard credential for serious contemporary printmaking practice in the Tokyo region. Her membership in both the Japan Print Society (Nihon Hangakai) and the Japan Printmakers Association (Nihon Hanga Kyōkai) — overlapping but distinct professional bodies — places her within the formal institutional life of the Japanese print profession.
Key Facts
- Active Period
- 1977
- Nationality
- 🇯🇵Japan
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
- Works Indexed
- 1
Frequently Asked Questions
Rika Saito (born 1977, Tokyo) is a Japanese woodcut printmaker whose practice has developed through a Tokyo art-school lineage that ran from Joshibi University of Art and Design to the Tokyo University of the Arts (Geidai). She continues to live and work in Tokyo, where she is a regular participant in the College Women's Association of Japan (CWAJ) Print Show — the principal annual showcase of contemporary Japanese printmaking — and is a member of the Japan Print Society and the Japan Printmakers Association.
Rika Saito was active born in 1977. They were associated with the Contemporary Mokuhanga movement.
Rika Saito'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.