After going to the main hall of the Mashiko Museum of Ceramic Art I went to Sasajima Kihei Hall. Sasajima is a famous artist born in Mashiko. Mashiko is mostly known for pottery but Sasajima was a printmaker. Due to health problems Sasajima had to develop his own way of producing these prints. A ticket to Mashiko Museum of Ceramic Art lets you enter the main hall along with Sasajima Kihei Hall

Kihei Sasajima was born in Mashiko in 1906. He attended school in Tokyo and worked as an elementary teacher after graduation. He took classes in art and printmaking on the side. In 1935 he took a class with Unichi Hiratsuka. Hiratsuka was already a famous printmaker of this time and a leader in the Sōsaku-hanga movement. Hiratsuka printed mainly in monochrome as did Sasajima. In 1938 Hamada Shoji, a pottery master member of the Mingei movement and influencer in Mashiko introduced Sasajima to Munakata Shikô. Munakata was also a leader in the Sosaku-hanga movement and is associated with the Mingei movement.

The sosaku hanga artists thought that an artwork is only genuine if everything was done by the artist himself - a revolutionary idea compared to the old teamwork idea (artist, carver, printer, publisher) of traditional Japanese printmaking. The Mingei movement is often translated as the folk craft movement (now more folk art) and believed that beauty was to be found in utilitarian and ordinary objects.

Munakata had a lasting impression on Sasajima. His two teachers, along with his love of calligraphy, and perhaps more practically the fact that he made art at night under artificial light led to most of his work is black and white.

Sasajima's first exhibit was in 1940 at Kokuga-kai (National Painting Association) In 1945 Sasajima left his job teaching to become a printmaker full time. His fame and career went more international when some of his prints were included in Oliver Statler's Modern Japanese Prints: An Art Reborn (1956). In 1957 some of his work was displayed in Yugoslavia, and in 1959 he had a two-person show in DC with HASHIMOTO Okiie

It was after this show in DC that he fell ill and was left permanently weakened. This meant he was no longer able to use the traditional baren to rub woodcut impressions onto paper. You could say he reversed the process. He pressed the paper into the recesses of a cut woodblock and then applied ink to the raised parts of the paper. In effect, the print is now on what would have been the reverse. In addition, this created a raised relief, or we might say made them 3D, and it was extremely popular!

Mount Fuji and Fudo Myoo are a common subject of his work from the 60's onwards. In 1990 he was chosen by Tochigi Prefecture as a Bunka kôrôsha (Person of cultural merit: 文化功労者). In 1993 Sasajima passed away.

Sasajima Kihei Hall, in the Mashiko Museum of Ceramic Art located in Sasajima's birthplace, holds a collection of nearly 300 prints and 200 sketches by him.

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