Calendar Sheet January

The title places this print within Maekawa's calendar work, a recurring format he designed for various groups of collectors and fellow printmakers. January as a subject typically calls for winter imagery — snow, the first plum blossom in anticipation of spring, New Year decorations, or a quiet scene of cold weather rendered in a restrained palette. Calendar prints by [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) artists were intentionally modest, intended for circulation among collectors and friends rather than for the open market, and they tended to be small in scale and economical in technique. Maekawa's calendar sheets often pair a simple subject with a date block or kanji for the month, designed and lettered by his own hand. The print would have been carved and printed by Maekawa himself in the self-sufficient sosaku-hanga manner, with hand-pressed registration and the visible texture of [washi](/glossary/washi) paper accepting pigment unevenly. Such works document the role calendars and small commissions played in sustaining a circle of independent Japanese printmakers through the mid twentieth century.