Shōtei Takahashi

Shōtei Takahashi (Tokyo, 1871 – 1945) was a Japanese woodblock printmaker associated with the shinsaku-hanga and shin-hanga movements. His work shows how Japanese printmaking adapted to the tastes of foreign buyers in the early twentieth century.

From the age of nine he trained with his uncle Matsumoto Fuko, who gave him the artistic name Shotei. At sixteen he took a job with the Imperial Household Department, copying designs of foreign ceremonial objects, and later worked for several publishers, signing his prints with different names. In 1907 Watanabe Shōzaburō commissioned him to produce a series of ten landscapes based on Hiroshige's prints.

The Great Kanto earthquake of 1923 destroyed Watanabe's woodblocks, and Shōtei recreated earlier designs and produced new ones in the shin-hanga style. In the 1930s he worked with Fusui Gabo, which gave him greater creative freedom; there it published Ama (1931), a female diver in a manner recalling Utamaro. He died of pneumonia in 1945; the belief that he died in the Hiroshima bombing is incorrect.