1973 Spring Catalog

Maki Haku's 1973 Spring Catalog cover for the Red Lantern Shop captures the artist at the height of his international reputation, when his abstract kanji prints were widely collected in the United States and Europe. The image, preserved through the Japanese Art Open Database and accessible via [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e).org, belongs to a long-running series of seasonal catalogs that the Tokyo-based dealer commissioned from leading [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) artists. By the early 1970s Maki Haku had perfected his distinctive process: he built up the printing surface with cement, sand, and pigment to create a relief that, when printed, transferred a tactile, almost lithic texture to the paper, with a single enlarged Chinese character or calligraphic fragment rising at the center. This treatment transformed kanji from semantic units into sculptural icons, aligning his practice with the broader postwar interest in calligraphic abstraction shared by figures such as Inoue Yu-ichi and Morita Shiryu, while staying rooted in the woodblock medium that anchored the sosaku-hanga (creative print) movement. Born Maejima Tadaaki in 1924, Maki Haku came to printmaking without formal training, learning directly from senior sosaku-hanga artists and developing his cement-relief technique through extensive experimentation. The spring catalog framing reflects the seasonal rhythm of the Japanese print market and the dealer's role in pacing collectors' acquisitions. Source: ukiyo-e.org (Japanese Art Open Database), Red Lantern Shop catalog image.