#Matsubara

[uwmspeccoll]

Staff Pick of the Week

My staff pick this week is the trade edition of The Tale of the Shining Princess by Japanese-born writer Hisako Matsubara (b.1935) and Japanese-Canadian artist-printmaker Naoko Matsubara (b.1937), published by Kodansha International LTD. Tokyo, Japan in 1966. 

As a artist-printmaker and bookmaker who makes woodcuts, I am greatly inspired by Naoko’s prints. Naoko Matsubara’s work carries on traditions of Japanese printmaking while having its own contemporary flavor. Her woodcuts are ecstatic, they are vibrating with movement. Her use of bold shapes and the white line of the the carving tool makes the most of what woodcut has to offer. In the book form, the active images carry the reader’s eyes through the book space. Her use of negative space activates the page. Additionally, her woodcuts have translated beautifully to commercial printing. 

The Matsubara sisters are daughters of a senior Shinto priest, and were raised in Kyoto. Both studied, lived, and worked in the United States. Hisako received her Master of Arts degree from Pennsylvania State College, moving to Germany where she continued her studies and became a prominent writer, publishing her work in Japanese, English, and German. In the 1980s she moved back to the United States, this time to California where she worked at Stanford University. 

Naoko received her Master of Fine Arts from Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, now Carnegie Mellon University. After her studies she traveled across Europe and Asia. She returned to the United States and became the personal assistant to the artist and wood engraver Fritz Eichenberg, an artist who has been featured many times on our blog. Naoko taught at Pratt University in New York and at the University of Rohde Island. She also lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts for a time. Naoko is currently living and working in Canada in Oakville, Ontario, where she continues to work and exhibit nationally. 

The work of both Hisako and Naoko have had great influence inside the United States and around the world. So lets celebrate their accomplishments! 

This book has end sheets of mulberry paper with inclusions of Bamboo leaves, the cover is a red textured paper with a gold stamped design by Naoko. 

View some of our other AAPI selections for this month.

View our other Staff Picks.

- Teddy, Special Collections Graduate Intern

[tokyostreetphoto]

Pink Wall, Matsubara 松原

[mariobabyface]

また松原の重機が溜まったよ

[pepperbag76]

Matsubara - Osaka Prefecture

🌹&📷 lulu_camera

[grlbts]

Matsubara Civic Library, Osaka, Japan

[cosmicsponge2004]

I didn't even know this ship existed

[pappikapon]

i always return to them it’s so bothersome. i was meant to be drawing ocs

[magicarchive]

Powerpuff Girls Z - Miho Shimogasa Illustrations

[nerdy-arty]

Remember my Misakanon hyperfixation?

I was feeling nostalgic so I dedicated a whole sketchbook spread to them... My gurls

Also the main two doodles were redraws.... Wowie how time flies

[weirdlookindog]

Hausu (1977)

[mylesnnaise]

sorry kokoro there wasnt room 🥲

no text version + sketch under cut

[bulkobon]

[mariobabyface]

銀座と松原の重機たち、クレーンも少々^ ^

[bloodraven55]

i’ve had the bandori game for all of five minutes and homotron3000 here will not stop doing her dramatic ass gay poses while dropping the most extra loser lesbian lines in every scene she’s in i’m crying why is kaoru like this

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Black Tight Killers (1966)

[awwxhf]

i finally bought a tablet !!!!! no more drawing on phone with fingers, i’m an ipad kid now