How to make prints

The title 'How to make prints' suggests an instructional or self-referential image, perhaps depicting the artist's tools (knives, [baren](/glossary/baren), brushes), the cutting of a block, or the printing process itself. Such reflexive subject matter aligns directly with Tobari's role as a theorist and advocate of the [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) movement, alongside Kanae Yamamoto. Where [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) prints concealed the labor of the [horishi](/glossary/horishi) (carver) and [surishi](/glossary/surishi) (printer) behind the published name of the designer, sosaku-hanga insisted on making the print as a unified act — designed, carved, and printed by a single artist — and frequently made that process visibly the subject. A print depicting the act of printmaking itself functions as a manifesto image, asserting the artist's authorship over every stage. Tobari published widely on the technique and philosophy of creative printmaking, and works of this kind probably accompanied or illustrated his pedagogical writings, which contributed to training the next generation of Japanese printmakers in the 1920s.