Hototogisu, May 1913 (vol. 16, no. 6) — magazine cover

This Hototogisu cover, designed by Tsuda Seifu for the May 1913 issue (volume 16, number 6) of the haiku magazine, was printed in color woodblock with letterpress and lithography and is held at the Rijksmuseum, where the impression is consulted through the museum's Wikimedia Commons holdings. By 1913 Tsuda was three years back from his 1908-1910 study in Paris and had begun his transition from late Meiji decorative designer to Taisho period yoga oil painter, exhibiting at the Bunten and on his way toward the founding of the Nikakai in 1914. The Hototogisu work straddles those two careers: the magazine was the principal vehicle by which Tsuda's friendship with Natsume Soseki was conducted, and his contributions to its visual program were among the more sustained design projects of the years immediately around the Meiji to Taisho transition. The May 1913 cover preserves the structural restraint Tsuda had absorbed from Paris alongside the flat patterning he had perfected in his Kyoto Zuan shu compendia, and the combination of color woodblock printing with the lithographic and letterpress elements of the masthead reflects the technologically composite character of early Taisho period magazine production. The Rijksmuseum impression preserves the woodblock registration and the disciplined chromatic restraint that distinguish Tsuda's Hototogisu cover work.