Saru Gallery
       Japanese Prints & Japanese Paintings

Biography Hatsuyama, Shigeru (1897 - 1973)

Born in Asakusa, Tokyo, in 1897, Hatsuyama Shigeru studied yamato-e painting as a child under Araki Tanrei, a Kano-school painter in Yanaka (Tokyo). Then he was apprenticed to a goldsmith; subsequently he worked for a fabric dyer in Kanda-Imagawabashi for five years, then worked for a kabuki actor, wrote poetry, and became a pupil of Igawa Sengai, a Japanese-style painter known for his pictures of women. In 1919 he became an illustrator for children's magazines following the founding of the children's magazine Otogi no sekai - Fairy World ; Hatsuyama did the illustrations for its cover from the first to the very last issue, which came out in October 1923.
Not until the late 20s did he start making woodblock prints. In the mid-thirties he stopped making illustrations (until that time he had had serialized illustrated stories in the Tokyo Asahi Shinbun) because he objected to creating propaganda pictures for children, and he devoted his energy to hanga instead. In 1944 he became a member of the Nihon Hanga Kyôkai. After the war he remained active as a woodblock print artist, concentrating of pictures for children or with children as subjects.