Asada Benji (麻田辨自) (artist 1899 – 1984)

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Biography:

The curatorial files at the British Museum provide this information:

"Asada was an adopted name; his original family name was Nakanishi. He was born in Kameoka, near Kyoto, and received his artistic education at the Kyoto Shiritsu Bijutsu Kogei Gakko (Kyoto City School of Fine Arts and Crafts) and the Kyoto Shiritsu Kaiga Senmon Daigaku (Kyoto City Specialist School of Painting) from which he graduated in 1924. In 1921 he first exhibited at the Teiten (Imperial Exhibition). He got to know the leaders of the 'Sosaku Hanga' movement and published in the magazine 'Han' (Prints, 1928-9), together with his fellow Kyoto artist Tokuriki Tomiki-chiro (q.v.). At the same period he began to study native-style painting under the Kyoto artist Nishimura Goun (1887-1938). He was a co-founder in 1929 of the Kyoto Creative Print Society with Tokuriki, Asano Takeji (b.1900) and others. With these two he designed the series 'Creative Prints of the Twelve Months in new Kyoto' (1930), a Kyoto answer to the Tokyo-dominated 'Sosaku Hanga' world. He became a member of the Japanese Print Society in 1932 and participated in 'One Hundred New Views of Japan' (1987, 0316, 0459). After 1945 he worked only as a painter in the 'Nihonga' style, much influenced by the work of Yamaguchi Kayo (1899-1984), a fellow-pupil of Goun's and specialising in 'kacho' (bird-and-flower) subjects."

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"Benji Asada was born in Kameoka, near Kyoto in 1899 and in 1914 he enrolled in the Kyoto City School of Fine Arts and Crafts (Kyôto Shiritsu Bijutsu Kôgei Gakkô), graduating in 1924. In 1927 he changed his name from Benji Nakanishi to Benji Asada, and in 1928 he participated in the publication of the magazine Han ("Prints"), together with Un'ichi Hiratsuka, Masao Maeda, Umetarô Azechi and his friend Tomikichirô Tokuriki. In 1929 he was a founding member of the Kyoto Sôsaku-Hanga Kyôkai, and he also started studying Nihonga ( = Japanese style) painting with Nishimura Goun."

"Until WWII he was active in all leading Hanga groups, but after the war he abandoned woodblock making and devoted all his energy to Nihonga, exhibiting with the Nitten."

This information was taken directly from Saru Gallery.

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The National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto gave an exhibition of the works of Asada Hiroshi (1931-97), the son of Asada Benji and the brother of Asada Takashi "...both renowned nihonga (Japanese-style paintings) artists..."

There are quite a few nihonga paintings by Asada Benji in the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto. The Honolulu Museum of Art owns at least three of his prints, on in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston owns one and the British Museum one.

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It would appear that Asada Benji can also be written as 麻田辨次.

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In a 2019 catalogue of an exhibition from St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota it says: "He had strong ties with publisher Uchida, who released most of his work. In 1928, he participated in the publication of the magazine titled Prints (Han) together with other printmakers including Hiratsuka Un'ichi, Maeda Masao, Azechi Umetarō and Tokuriki Tomikichirō."