Mizushima Nihofu

The artist at the age of 41

image source: cropped from photograph of artist

and family appearing in "The Ladie's Graphic," October 1925

Mizushima Nihofu 水島爾保布 (1884-1958)

(also seen romanized as Niō, Nihou and Niou)

BIOGRAPHY

Sources: Wikipedia Japan https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B0%B4%E5%B3%B6%E7%88%BE%E4%BF%9D%E5%B8%83 [accessed 11-14-23]; Guide to Modern Japanese Woodblock Prints: 1900-1975, Helen Merritt, University of Hawaii Press, 1992, p. 94 and as footnoted.

Born on December 8, 1884 in Tokyo, Mizushima was a painter, illustrator, cartoonist, manga artist, novelist, playwright and essayist. The son of the writer and translator Mizushima Shinjirō 水島慎次郎, his own eldest son was the famous science fiction author Kyōdomari Aran 今日泊亜蘭 (1910-2008).

Mizushima graduated from the Japanese painting department of Tokyo Art School (now Tokyo University of the Arts) in 1909 and studied with the painter and illustrator Kubota Kinsen 久保田金僊 (1875-1954). In 1913 he became an illustrator for the newspaper Osaka Asahi Shinbun, where his baseball cartoons brought him popularity, and he would go on to illustrate for the Tokyo Nichinichi Shinbun.

In 1916 he began working with the book publisher Bun'endō, contributing to the sketch-tour book Pictures in Famous Places in Osaka and Kobe (Hanshin meisho zue) and in 1920 he would illustrate and author the book Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō – The Inland Sea (Tōkaidō gojūsan tusgi – Setonaikai), which is considered to be the last major work of the sketch-tour genre. Along with Maekawa Senpan (1888-1960), Okamoto Ippei (1886-1948), Hiratsuka Un'ichi (1895-1997) and the fourteen other members of the Tokyo Manga Association he contributed to Tōkaidō gojūsantsugi manga emaki 東海道五十三次漫画絵巻 published by Chūō Bijutsu Kyōkai in 1921, consisting of 2 scrolls, each over 30 feet long and 10″ high, containing 55 paintings.

As a book illustrator, his drawings for Jun’ichirō Tanizaki's Ningyo no Nageki 人魚の嘆き (The Mermaid’s Lament) published by Shun'yōdō in August 1919 and the 1950 translation of the Chinese folk legend The Illustrated Journey to the West 繪本西遊記 stand out.

cover to The Mermaid's Lament: The Magician, written by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, pictures by Mizushima Nihofu

published by Shun'yōdō, August 1919

7 1/2 x 10 1/3 in. 86 pages

人魚の嘆き・魔術師　谷崎潤一郎著　水島爾保布画大正八年八月　春陽堂発行

19 X 26.2 cm 86頁

click on image to enlarge

covers for the three volumes of

The Illustrated Journey to the West, 1950

translated by Yudate Yoshio 弓館芳夫, illustrations by Mizushima Nihofu, published by Toppan

繪本西遊記上,中,下

click on image to enlarge

He was active in the avant-garde movement belonging to groups such as the Kōjusha (Art Group) 行樹社 (1912-1917) and Daiichi-Sakka-Domei 第一作家同盟 (First Writers Alliance, or DSD) characterized as "a "radical nihonga group...dedicated to establishing social equality, and integrating stylistic and theoretical developments in European avant-garde an into Japanese-style painting".1 Merritt notes, but I can find no other confirmation, that he "specialized in kamishibai (paper picture shows)" and that he was "possibly active with early sosaku hanga circles."2

1 MAVO: Japanese Artists and the Avant-Garde 1905-1931, Gennifer Weisenfeld, University of California Press, 2002p. 99.2 Guide to Modern Japanese Woodblock Prints: 1900-1975, Helen Merritt, University of Hawaii Press, 1992, p. 94.