Kajita Hanko (梶田半古) (artist 1870 – 1917)

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Biography:

Laurance Roberts tell us that Hanko was the son of the famous metalsmith Masaharu.

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Kajita Hanko was born in Tokyo in 1870 under the given name of Kajita Jojirō. At the age of eleven he was apprenticed to the Shijo painter, Nabeta Gyokuei. He took the artist name Hanko in 1890. He made his living primarily from illustrations, which he produced for serial novels of the soap opera kind.

Hankō made most of the illustrations for “The Demon of Gold”, a popular novel series published by the Tokyo newspaper “Yomiuri Shinbun”. These illustrations known as “kuchi-e” were produced like traditional woodblock prints and were often published in deluxe editions. They were sometimes enriched with techniques such as mica or embossing. Kuchi-e were usually folded once or twice in the middle in order to fit as insertions into the novels.

Hankō worked at the art school of Takoaka City in Toyama Prefecture in 1898. He had established his own private school in Tokyo just before the turn of the century. He trained such artists as Togyo Okumara, Maeda Seison and Kokei Kobayashi. Hankō Kajita died of tuberculosis at the age of 47.

This information was taken directly from the International Fine Print Dealers Association.

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"Né à Tōkyō en 1870 d’un père artisan du métal, sous le nom de Kajita Jojirō (ou Teijirō) 梶田錠次郎, Kajita Hanko ne reprend pas l’entreprise familiale et se tourne vers l’art. Il entre en apprentissage chez plusieurs grands artistes, tel Kikuchi Yōsai (菊 池容斎, 1788-1878), connu pour ses portraits de personnages historiques ou légendaires. Le jeune artiste participe en 1891 à la création de la Nippon Seinen Kaiga Kyōkai 日本青年絵画協会 (« Association des jeunes artistes japonais », renommée en 1896 Nippon Kaiga Kyōkai 日本絵画協会, soit « Association des artistes japonais »), qui organise de nombreuses expositions et concours dans les années 1890, dans lesquels il peut montrer son talent."

"Kajita Hanko est un peintre à la croisée des styles classiques de la peinture japonaise, des estampes et l’évolution des arts au début de l’ère Meiji. Il illustre les couvertures de magazines mais également celles des romans en vogue mettant en scène de belles femmes, et semble être très apprécié du public. Au début du XXe siècle, ouvert à de nouvelles approches, il s’essaye à la technique de la lithographie, et forme de nombreux disciples. Il meurt, encore jeune, de la tuberculose en 1917."

This is quoted from Diplôme national de master 'Les Fables choisies de La Fontaine (1894), étude d’une rencontre artistique franco-japonaise' by Eva Delcourt, Université de Lyon, August 2023, page 53.

On page 103 Delcourt speculated that Hanko may have been influenced by the earlier illustrations of Grandville and Doré.

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Note that some sources give the spelling of Hanko with a long 'o', while others do not. So far, this is unresolved as of March, 2025. We are tending against the use of the long 'o' as a mistake picked up and repeated by several authors, including this one.