Bunraku samurai,

c. 1950s

by Saitō Kyoshi

About This Print

An untitled print of a bunraku (puppet) samurai. While bunraku puppets were a recurring subject for Saitō in his early work, this print, which carries the stamp on its verso of Adachi Colour Print Studio is a bit of a mystery, with its thick application of pigments which appears similar in printing technique to a few early Saitō prints such as his 1949 work titled Milk and the 1950 print Steady Gaze. 

Until I came across this print, the only Saitō works printed by Adachi which I was aware of were six or so of his images of children, commonly referred to as his "children of Aizu" prints.

In January of 2023 I was contacted by fellow collector Jon Lipka inquiring about this print, as Jon had three similar prints in his collection (shown below). I could only tell Jon that my print had an Adachi Color Print Studio (now the Adachi Institute of Woodcut Prints) publisher seal on the back. In his investigation, Jon first reached out to the Kiyoshi Saito Museum of Art, Yanaizu and received the following response to his inquiry:

"We are only looking at the photos you send, so we cannot say for sure, but these works appear to have been colored by someone else on top of reproductions of Kiyoshi Saito's work.

We will send you images of Kiyoshi Saito's Bunraku work, so please take a look.

These works lack the sharpness seen in Kiyoshi Saito's work.

Also, compared to Kiyoshi Saito's works of the same period, these works are very decorative.

And the paper used and the signature on the back seem to be different from Kiyoshi Saito’s.” 

Jon next contacted Adachi and received the below response which clarified that these were in fact produced by Adachi but never sold by them and are quite rare.

"Thank you for your reply with images.

It was really nice to see those pictures. I was looking at our old production record and found some useful information. However since it happened a long time ago, please understand that most of the information is 'It seems to be.'

Adachi produced the Bunraku series of Kiyoshi Saito around the 50s (Late Showa 20s). And the red small stamp on the back is ours. It was commission work just for the production, so we did not sell them. They were printed on the dyed in black non washi paper. It is quite an unusual production method for us, but it seems that we were asked to try it that way. Instead of printing with watercolors and letting them soak into the fibers of washi paper, only this series was printed to let the colors sit on the paper with different types of paints, which creates the thick texture of the print as you mentioned. The black area we see underneath the other colors, is the color of the dyed paper. It was ordered by either artist, Kiyoshi Saito or his publisher. After this series, we produced the other series (Children), but they were printed with a standard ukiyo-e style woodcut printing method.

Unfortunately no prints of Kiyoshi Saito are left in our studio. So we enjoyed seeing your collections very much. They look to be in great condition even over the years! It seems that the printed numbers were small for this series. So, it is great that you own multiple works. Please enjoy them!

I hope this information is useful for you.

Best,

Koko Nakayama

Jon Lipka's Bunraku Prints by Saitō

Print Details