Haku Maki's 1965 abstract, "Work 65-5."

By Mary Thomas, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Flaming red banners plunge from the 18-foot-high ceiling of Carnegie Museum of Art's Heinz Galleries, interrupting the visual quietude of the warmly toned walls that hold the 230 images -- from traditional beauties to ghost stories and battle scenes -- of "Modern Japanese Prints: 1868-1989," opening Saturday.

Sekino Jun-ichiro's 1968 "Portrait of Munataka Shiko." Click photo for larger image. 'Modern Japanese Prints: 1868-1989' Where: Carnegie Museum of Art. When: Saturday through April 15. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, noon-5 p.m. Sundays. Admission: $10, seniors $7, students/children $6 Events: March 3 -- Family Celebration including storytelling and arts activities in English and Japanese; March 15 -- Lunch & Learn: Japanese Printmaking Traditions, with the Frick Art & Historical Center (fee, registration required); March 18 and April 1 -- Gallery Talk by artist Claudia Giannini, who worked with James Austin to catalog his collection. Drop-in Family Activities weekends. Information: 412-622-3131 or www.cmoa.org. Related coverage A diverse collection of collectors

They are markers of the three styles the prints are grouped within -- Meiji, shin-hanga and sosaku-hanga -- but the assertive slice each makes through the space between categories may also be read as symbolic of the changes within Japanese culture associated with these shifts of expression.

The Meiji period, 1868 to 1912, is characterized by the overthrow of feudal shogun rule and restoration of the governing power of the emperor, an expansion of relations with the West, two major wars with China and Russia, and the internal turmoil accompanying such vast cultural upheaval.

"It's a significant period because it defines the beginning of modernism in Japan," explains Amanda Zehnder, Carnegie assistant curator of fine arts.

Shin-hanga and sosaku-hanga -- translated as "new prints" and "creative prints" -- grew out of these seismic shifts and the waning tradition of ukiyo-e, the woodcut depictions of the floating world of actors and beauties that had blossomed during the previous Tokugawa period.

The military shogun government ruled Japan between 1615 and 1868, holding the emperors in check as mere figureheads and isolating the island nation from the rest of the world, Zehnder says. In 1868 the shogun was toppled by the Emperor Meiji, himself a warrior. His policy changes included expanding contact with the West, a process begrudgingly begun in 1853 when a naval brigade ordered by President Fillmore and headed by U.S. Naval Commodore Matthew C. Perry arrived on Japan's shores.

This turn toward Westernization and modernization was also reflected in the arts including a decline from favor of traditional expression such as ukiyo-e, which was associated with the shogun.

The end of the 19th century was a turbulent time, Zhender says, of wars, uprisings and unrest. Meiji influence was diminishing and the population was weary and conflicted.

Out of this arose the most avant-garde of Japanese art movements, sosaku-hanga, founded in 1904 by artists Yamamoto Kanae and Ishii Hakutei.

Traditionally, artists were commissioned by a publisher to design a print that skilled artisans in his employ would then carve into a woodblock and print onto paper. "The publisher was calling the shots," Zehnder says, and dozens of people were involved in the production team.

Sosaku-hanga artists rebelled against this, Zehnder says, by taking control of the entire process, from design to final print. So proud were they of this development that the artists would at times mark their works "self carved and self printed." Styles became individuated also, and included pure abstraction. Like their Western counterparts, they thought of an artist as a "heroic, creative individual, a free spirit, a creative force."

What they probably didn't think of, Zehnder says, is that their rebellion was actually in line with Meiji plans to modernize.

In 1912 Emperor Meiji died and in 1915 the publisher Watanabe Shozaburo initiated the shin-hanga movement based upon the old team system and supported by artists "who flocked to him driven by nostalgia for traditional ways." Subjects included the actor prints, beauties and landscapes popular in more conservative times, Zehnder says, "never abstract, always representational, printed in smaller sizes." The first shin-hanga print was by the popular artist Kawase Hasui and was published in 1918.

The exhibition is a survey in many ways, Zehnder says, and its primary goal is to introduce the public to modern Japanese prints. An underlying theme is the local presence of a long-standing hub of major collecting of Japanese prints, especially modern Japanese prints, she adds.

This rich exhibition draws heavily upon the exceptional collection of the late James Bliss Austin, bequeathed to Carnegie Museum in 1989, which is also the last year of the Japanese Showa period that witnessed World War II and the succeeding U.S. occupation.

	Kitano Tsunetomi's "Winter," from 1925. Click photo for larger image.

Austin was a native of Washington, D.C., and graduate of Lehigh and Yale universities who came to Pittsburgh as a U.S. Steel executive in 1956 and stayed after his 1968 retirement. He credited his interest in Japan to his naval officer grandfather, who returned from assignments in the Pacific in the 1870s and '80s with stories and artifacts. Austin's legacy includes nearly 2,600 artworks dating from the 12th to the 20th centuries.

Complementing the Austin gifts are other works from the Carnegie collection, most notably the outstanding series "Ten Great Disciples of Buddha" of Munakata Shiko, donated by Mr. and Mrs. Charles J. Rosenbloom.

Munakata, who Zehnder likens to a Picasso figure for Japan, was a devout Buddhist who carved the giant, several-foot-high woodblocks in 1939. In 1945, he moved the disciple blocks to his backyard bomb shelter, leaving in his home two similarly sized blocks depicting Bodhisattvas (divine figures who've attained enlightenment). That same year, his house and all in it was destroyed, and his family was evacuated from Tokyo. When Munakata returned to his property in 1951, he found the disciple blocks buried but intact.

The artist re-carved the Bodhisattvas and exhibited the series at the Third Biennial International Art Exhibition in Sao Paolo in 1955, where it received first prize in the prints division, and at the 1956 Venice Biennale, where it was awarded the Grand Prix.

In 1957 the Rosenblooms presented the complete series of 12 scrolls to the museum.

Also a significant component of this exhibition is a fascinating array of prints loaned by four collectors with local ties -- Esther Barazzone, Nicholas Reise, Dr. Lila Penchansky and one who wishes to remain anonymous -- which enrich and enliven those owned by the museum.

A sampler of these collections includes mysterious Meiji-era prints patterned upon ancient folk tales, lively triptych battle scenes, which Zehnder notes as precursors to Japanese animation, individualized and experimental expressions by sosaku-hanga artists, and Yoshida Hiroshi's poetic studies of light and atmosphere.

Zehnder says her hope is that visitors to the exhibition will learn the terms Meiji, shin-hanga and sosaku-hanga and gain a sense of what those categories mean. It's an easy task, considering the visually and culturally seductive path one travels to achieve it.

Kawase Hasui's "Benton Pond, Shiba," from 1929.