Hiroshi himself started out working with oils, much like his adopted father.\u00a0 All of his creations were realist in style, and he vehemently avoided some of the more newer, abstract trends in the art world.\u00a0 In 1920, by the age of 44, Hiroshi was well known for doing oil and watercolor paintings of landscapes.\u00a0 Around this time, Hiroshi began to experiment with woodblock prints.\u00a0 During a trip to the United States, Hiroshi brought with him many of his already-famous paintings and a few of his woodblock prints.\u00a0 What he found was that the West was far more interested in woodblock prints, more specifically ukiyo-e<\/em>, making Hiroshi \u201cthink that the Japanese had better get busy in the field that was once their own.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 His switch to woodblock prints was compounded by the fact that other offerings on the market were of generally low quality, and he believed he could successfully compete by integrating Western style into traditional, Japanese style prints.<\/a>\u00a0 In other words, he used some artistic techniques of the West, but retained the same subjects as before.\u00a0 The change from oils and watercolors to prints paid off, as the family became wealthier, and Hiroshi became one of the leaders in shinhanga<\/em>, or \u201cnew prints.\u201d<\/p>\n On July 25th, 1911, Toshi Yoshida was born.\u00a0 Within his first year of life, Toshi contracted polio meningitis, leaving him crippled for life.\u00a0 One of his legs was rendered almost entirely useless.\u00a0 Therefore, from a young age, Toshi was unable to do what normal children did\u2014play outside.\u00a0 Instead, starting at about the age of three, he and his parents, and occasionally his playmates, would have drawing contests.\u00a0 By 1915, he was already receiving lessons from his father.<\/a><\/p>\n In 1923, Toshi\u2019s parents went on a multiyear journey to the United States, leaving Toshi at home with an Uncle of his in Tokyo.\u00a0 This stay was crucial to his development as an artist, as it allowed him the opportunity of sketching animals in a local pet store.\u00a0 Furthermore, his Grandmother named Rui encouraged his interest in animal sketches, in large part because Rui considered this to be a way in which Toshi could differentiate himself from his father, since his father specialized in landscape prints.<\/a><\/p>\n As mentioned previously, upon returning from the United States, Hiroshi Yoshida became interested in making prints.\u00a0 Due in large part to the family fortune acquired through Hiroshi\u2019s popularity as an oil and watercolor artist, the family was able to make its foray into woodblock printmaking.\u00a0 Toshi\u2019s first work, Crabs<\/em>, was produced when he was only 14!<\/p>\n After returning to health, Toshi entered an art school that was dominated by European methods, and it is here that Toshi produced his first oil paintings.\u00a0 While learning, Toshi reverted mainly to his father\u2019s subject material: landscapes.<\/a>\u00a0 This was probably due to the school Toshi attended (his father had been one of the founders), and because he was trying to learn the nuances of oil paintings.\u00a0 After graduating and by the end of the 1930s, differences in Toshi\u2019s style as compared to Hiroshi\u2019s became apparent.\u00a0 According to Skibbe, \u201cHiroshi had been drawn to nature clothed in mist or clouds or the half-light of dawn or dusk, and from such moments he wanted to distill a feeling of transient beauty or partly revealed mystery.\u00a0 Toshi in contrast preferred full light, clear definition, expressing a sense of calm or stability underlying objective reality.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n For a few years after his post-art school years, Toshi stopped making prints.\u00a0 His school specialized in oil works, so that is what he created.\u00a0 The capstone of his paintings can be seen in Ishikiriba (1939)<\/em>, an oil painting made to win the heart of his future wife, Kiso.\u00a0 It is said to show Toshi at his best in oils.<\/p>\n In 1938, right before Toshi and Kiso married, Toshi began to experiment with woodblock prints once more.\u00a0 From such works as Shinjiku (1938)<\/em> and From the Ryogoku Bridge (1939)<\/em>, one can see that whereas Hiroshi preferred to obscure objects in a misty haze, Toshi preferred to make things more clear-cut.<\/a><\/p>\n Toshi\u2019s move back to woodblock prints came at an interesting time in world history.\u00a0 The government increasingly began to censor artists, and with Japan attacking the United States in 1941, the woodblock print market that the Yoshida family catered to went dry; selling to the enemy was unthinkable and impossible.\u00a0 In addition, Toshi\u2019s style was greatly influenced by Japan\u2019s national policy.\u00a0 Every Japanese citizen was expected to at least give the appearance of being nationalistic.\u00a0 Hiroshi complied completely, making several trips to China (who Japan was also fighting), where he created prints of \u201cpeaceful Chinese scenes.\u201d\u00a0 He also made prints of sites in Japan that portrayed a sense of national spirit.\u00a0 Toshi, on the other hand, both attempted to differentiate himself from his father and reject the nationalistic images that were becoming popular.\u00a0 He avoided \u201cdramatic atmospheres and painterly effects\u201d and instead focused on the \u201clittle people\u201d who made the war possible.<\/a>\u00a0 Iron Factory (1943)<\/em> portrays \u201cHeroic Japan in the form of common laborers,\u201d and Toshi shows signs of an \u201cinterest in light, shadow, and color\u201d here.<\/p>\n Postwar Japan in 1945 marks a momentous change for the Yoshida family.\u00a0 Where does one begin?\u00a0 First, and ultimately most importantly, Hodaka, Toshi\u2019s younger brother, began experimenting with abstract oil prints, something Hiroshi vehemently despised to the point where Hodaka kept it a secret.\u00a0 Hodaka went down this path partly because he yearned to do something different from both his father, Hiroshi, and the rest of his family.\u00a0 Toshi discovered Hodaka\u2019s secret, and would occasionally watch and experiment with him.<\/a>\u00a0 From a cultural perspective, Hiroshi\u2019s rejection of abstract art makes sense; it has been theorized that abstract art was not popular within Japan at this time because it wasn\u2019t \u201cconducive to the Japanese character\u201d and there still remained \u201ca love of surviving traditional scenes and a desire to portray them before they disappeared.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 In other words, there was a strong desire to preserve the old.\u00a0 A second important change is that Toshi began to defy his father even more.\u00a0 He made a print, Ishiyama Temple (1945-6)<\/em>, which was twice the size of his previous prints; something his father believed was impossible and greatly discouraged.<\/a>\u00a0 In addition, as a result of Hodaka, Toshi increasingly experimented with more abstract concepts.<\/p>\n Evidence of Toshi\u2019s interest in abstract paintings surfaces in the oil painting Sunlight Patterns in Shallow Water (1947)<\/em>.\u00a0 The beauty of this piece is that it satisfied his father\u2014who abhorred abstract art\u2014as well as his inner desire to experiment.\u00a0 He was able to play with the light on the water and to investigate pattern and color while still drawing upon a natural subject.<\/a><\/p>\n Toshi discovered another \u201cloophole\u201d when he decided to do Microbe Landscape (1950)<\/em>.\u00a0 While still an image of something natural, Toshi was also able to choose his own color palette due to the drab look of the specimen under a microscope.<\/a>\u00a0 So while it may at first appear to be entirely abstract, it is in reality realistic and yet foreign to the viewer.<\/p>\n In 1950, Hiroshi passed away, and Toshi became the head of the family.\u00a0 While certainly a sad time for the family, it finally allowed Toshi and others in the family to fully embrace the abstract movement.\u00a0 Hodaka, of course, had already completely embraced an abstract style well before the death of Hiroshi, but within a year of Hiroshi\u2019s death, both Toshi and Hiroshi\u2019s wife, Fujio, had created their own abstract or semi-abstract pieces.<\/a>\u00a0 During an interview a few years after his father\u2019s death, Toshi stated that \u201cfrom these paintings [Microbe Landscape et al<\/em>] it was an easy\u2014I suppose inevitable\u2014step to abstraction, but it was a step my father could never approve.\u00a0 Still, I could not ignore the movement of the times and I began to break away from my former realistic approach two or three years after the war.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 The \u2018movement of the times\u2019 is referring to the Japanese general public\u2019s eventual acceptance of abstract art in post-war.<\/a><\/p>\n In 1952, after successfully experimenting with abstract themes in oil paintings, and with the restraints and pressures his father put on him removed, Toshi made his first abstract woodblock prints.\u00a0 Initially, Hodaka\u2019s influence could easily be seen amongst Toshi\u2019s prints, although gradually the techniques and skills Toshi acquired while working with oil paintings began to appear on his woodblock prints as well.\u00a0 Upon returning from the United States in July 1954 (Toshi had spent 10 months there establishing connections and advertising the family\u2019s wares), Toshi set out to improve upon some of his earlier abstract woodblock prints.\u00a0 Below is a comparison of No. 10 (1952)<\/em> and Dragon B (1955)<\/em>.<\/p>\n![\"crabs\"](\"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2013\/07\/crabs.png\")
<\/a>When Toshi was 19 years old, he traveled with his father to India, a form of rite of passage.\u00a0 Toshi sketched everything that he could, and during this time his skill greatly increased.\u00a0 Sketchbooks show that Toshi\u2019s ability to handle perspective increased as the trip progressed, and that upon their return to Japan, Toshi was capable of portraying scenes as well as his father.<\/a>\u00a0 Unfortunately, upon their actual return, Toshi became weak; he had, after all, just traveled the rest of Asia with a limp leg.\u00a0 A big part of the problem lay in Hiroshi and Toshi\u2019s relationship; Hiroshi was a demanding father, and Toshi was coming of age, a combination ripe for trouble.\u00a0 Grandmother Rui intervened, and helped nurse Toshi back to health.\u00a0 Hiroshi disallowed Toshi from reading newspapers or listening to the radio, so he had little concept of the outside, Western world.\u00a0 Grandmother Rui changed this by letting Toshi explore Western music and literature; in other words, Toshi was finally exposed to Western culture.<\/a><\/p>\n![\"ishikiriba\"](\"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2013\/07\/ishikiriba.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"iron_factory\"](\"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2013\/07\/iron_factory.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"ishiyama_temple\"](\"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2013\/07\/ishiyama_temple.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"shallow_water\"](\"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2013\/07\/shallow_water.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"microbe_landscape\"](\"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2013\/07\/microbe_landscape.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
![\"no.10\"](\"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2013\/07\/no.10.png\")
<\/a><\/td>\n![\"dragon_b2\"](\"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2013\/07\/dragon_b2.png\")
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n![\"morinji_in_spring\"](\"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2013\/07\/morinji_in_spring.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n