Kawanishi Hide was born 1894 in Kobe, where he lived all his life. Inspired by Yamamoto Kanae’s sosaku hanga prints, Kawanishi taught himself to carve and print while still in high school. The artist says he was also influenced by Lautrec, Van Gogh, Onchi and Gaugin. Despite his isolation from the sosaku hanga movement in Tokyo, he was a core member. He began exhibiting prints in 1923. Because he considerd Kobe to be dark and gloomy, his style used primary colors in simple contrasting effects. In 1953 he created the series “One Hundred Scenes of Kobe”. Another popular subject of Kawanishi’s prints is the circus. In creating his prints, Kawanishi used solid blocks of katsura or ho, and printed on thick hodomura paper, thoroughly moistened so that the colors seep through to the back. Kawanishi was a prolific artist, creating some 1,000 designs during his lifetime and producing and contributing to a number of printed albums and books including the book “Flowers of Japan”. Kawanishi was awarded the Hyogo Prefecture Culture Prize in 1949 and Kobe Shinbun Peace Prize in 1962. His work is contained in many major museum collections. His third son Kawanishi Yuzaburō (1923-2014) followed in his father’s style with more international subjects.