OHARA KOSON|11 MIN READ
Ohara Koson Prints and How They Were Made
One man, three signatures, and a white peacock fanning its tail across a pale green ground. The prints came from a quiet collaboration between a painter and the craftspeople who turned his lines into colour.
WRITER Moryarty
You may have seen a white peacock with its tail spread against a pale green background, a little blue bird among the orange paulownia leaves, or two goldfish in a wide stretch of water. They are Ohara Koson prints, made by a Japanese painter and print designer who lived from 1877 to 1945 and carried the bird-and-flower picture into modern woodblock publishing.
Koson trained as a painter, made export prints around the turn of the twentieth century, returned to painting for a stretch, and then joined the publisher Watanabe Shōzaburō's shin-hanga revival in the 1920s. The finished prints were never his work alone. A carver cut his lines into wood, a printer laid colour onto damp paper, and a publisher sent the sheet out into the world. This article follows that working life, then looks closely at the birds, the white peacock, the flowers and the fish that made his name.
Who was Ohara Koson?
Ohara Koson was born Ohara Matao in Kanazawa, on the Sea of Japan coast, in 1877. His working life crossed the late Meiji years, the Taishō era and the early Shōwa era. He died in 1945, having spent more than four decades making images of birds, flowers, fish and water.
The signatures can confuse new collectors. Early works carry the name Koson. From the mid-1920s many Watanabe designs were signed Shōson, and prints for other publishers in the same years carry the name Hōson. All three signatures belong to one artist, and the changes mark different publishers and periods rather than different people. That's why museum labels and dealers sometimes seem to be describing three different artists.
Birds and seasonal plants dominate the work people remember first, but the range is broader. Fish, boats, cats and waterside scenes appear throughout his career. At its core, though, his subject stayed close to nature, set down with enough open space for each creature to stand on its own.
Where did he learn to paint birds and flowers?
As a young man, he went to Tokyo and studied painting under Suzuki Kason, a painter of birds and flowers. The 'son' in his art name comes from his teacher's name. That training gives his later print designs a painter's starting point: a branch, a bird, a blossom, and not much else in the picture.
The tradition he joined is called kachō-ga, the Japanese art of birds and flowers. A kachō-ga image doesn't need a landscape behind the subject. A single bird on a branch can carry the season, the weather and the mood. That economy suited Koson. In his prints, one branch, one bird and the open paper carry the whole picture.
Two very different prints show what the training produced. In one, his paulownia bird sits among the rising leaves, a small blue figure against open space. In another, his irises fill a vertical sheet with slender green leaves and open blossoms, and the pale background does the work of a landscape. Both depend on the same close attention to how a stem bends and a leaf opens.
How did Ohara Koson paint birds and flowers?
Paintings and print designs demanded different things from the same hand. In a painting, a fine brush contour can separate a beak, a feather and a twig. The painter changes the pressure of the brush to make a slender stem different from a broad leaf, and that line carries the whole image before any colour is added. Koson also painted bird-and-flower subjects in ink and colour, and his control of that changing line carried over into the designs before they were handed to a carver.
Ink and diluted colour build tone across plumage and petals while leaving the paper open. A painted wash moves freely, so the same stroke can be dark at one end and pale at the other. That's not what happens in a print. A printed colour is laid down block by block, and its transitions have to be planned, carved and printed deliberately.
A designer's drawing had to anticipate that difference. A painted edge comes from the brush in one pass, while a printed edge is cut and inked before it reaches the paper. His job as a designer was to give the carver and printer an image they could translate into blocks and repeated impressions. A line that looked effortless on paper still had to be cut into wood. A wash of colour still had to be separated into areas that could be printed one at a time.
How did his early prints reach audiences abroad?
Around the turn of the twentieth century, the Tokyo publisher Daikokuya began producing Koson's bird-and-flower designs as colour woodblock prints. Daikokuya was run by Matsuki Heikichi, and it aimed much of its stock at foreign buyers. The prints were made to travel, printed in editions and sold as affordable images of Japan's natural world.
Export changed the audience and the reach of his subjects. Buyers in the United States and Europe bought Koson's birds and flowers in quantity. Many early impressions went abroad, and they still turn up in Western collections and on the market today.
His early print designs ranged across very different kinds of image, and together they gave foreign buyers a broad sample of Japanese nature subjects. A small blue bird on a paulownia branch keeps the scene close and still. The white peacock spreads its tail across the sheet and changes the scale entirely. The water lilies show pink flowers and rounded pads closely cropped, while a pair of goldfish hangs in open water.
Why did Koson return to woodblock printing in the 1920s?
After his early export work, Koson stepped back from print design and concentrated substantially on painting. For a stretch of years, the painter's brush took priority over the publisher's block. That interval is one reason his surviving work can feel divided: an early run of prints, a quieter painted middle, and then a late flowering of prints signed with new names.
The return came through Watanabe Shōzaburō, the Tokyo publisher who gave the shin-hanga movement its name and its shape. Shin-hanga, or new prints, revived the old division of labour, with a designer, a carver, a printer and a publisher working together on each image. Watanabe recruited painters for their designs, and around 1926 he brought Koson into that circle.
The later prints continue the bird-and-flower subjects rather than replacing them. What changed was mostly the publishing system, the signatures and the market. A Koson print from the 1920s and one from around 1910 often share the same vocabulary of species, open space and seasonal detail.
How were Ohara Koson's woodblock prints made?
Every Japanese colour woodblock print was a collaboration, and Koson's role was the design. The publisher coordinated the specialists. A carver pasted the design onto a block of cherry wood and cut away everything that shouldn't print. A printer then took over. He brushed pigment onto the carved block. Then he laid the damp paper on top and rubbed the back of the sheet with a baren, a flat hand-held pad.
Registration made the whole system possible. A carved outline and separate areas of colour had to align exactly on the sheet, and a mark called the kentō kept them in place. A narrow stem, a beak or the edge of a feather could be ruined by a fraction of a millimetre, so the carver and printer worked to a tolerance most drawing never requires.
Soft transitions of colour came from a technique called bokashi. The printer wipes pigment unevenly across a block, or damps it to control how much colour reaches the paper. A single printed area can then fade from deep tone to nothing. You can look for soft gradations of the kind bokashi produced in the blue of the iris petals and in the gentle shifts of the pink water lilies. The effect looks painterly, but bokashi is a printing process, one sheet at a time.
Fine linework made different demands on the block. To print feather patterns of the sort visible in the peacock's spread tail, a carver generally had to leave very fine ridges standing, and lines as slender as those around this egret in falling rain had to stay fine enough to read as weather rather than scratches.
What makes Ohara Koson's bird prints distinctive?
Bird prints vary through the number of birds, their posture and their place on the paper. The blue bird among the paulownia leaves is held by its branch. In the pair of geese crossing the water in flight, the eye follows their movement through open air above the ripples.
Water birds give him a different set of compositions. The swimming white geese set two white bodies against dark water, with a few reeds rising from one side. The gulls over the rough sea put five birds at different heights above active waves, so rhythm replaces stillness.
The settings stay minimal on purpose. A branch or a reed bed locates the bird without competing with it, and broad open areas keep each posture legible. What at first looks like empty space is the part of the design that lets the bird be seen clearly.
How did Ohara Koson compose his peacock print?
In the pale peacock with the opened tail, the bird spreads its tail across a soft green backdrop. Beside the little bird resting among the paulownia branches, it fills far more of the sheet. That difference in scale gives the peacock a more ceremonial air, while the small bird stays an intimate observation.
The drama sits inside a simple silhouette. Fine feather pattern spreads above slender legs, and the surrounding ground stays comparatively plain. The detail never turns into clutter because the outer shape holds it all together. You read the fan first, then the small patterned world inside it, then the pale body at the centre.
The rainy egret also centres a white bird, but it works the other way round: the dark rainy background makes the pale bird stand out. The white peacock does the opposite, its pale plumage staying distinct against the gentler colour behind it so the open fan reads clearly all the way round.
How did Koson portray rain and snow?
Weather changes the mood of a bird scene, and Koson used it with restraint. The lone egret in rainy weather keeps its white body still while the long lines of rain fall around it. A flock of egrets in pale snow gathers overlapping white forms into a cold, quiet landscape. One print uses falling rain to isolate the bird, while the other uses lying snow to hold the group together.
Snow enters the plant world in a scene of two blue flycatchers on a snowy nandina bush. The birds sit among arching branches with snow-tipped berries, and the seasonal detail surrounds them rather than isolating them. The red berries stand out against the white snow and the two blue birds.
Five gulls above the rough water give the sea a turbulent, wind-blown character. The rainy egret uses weather the other way around: instead of rough water, a fine, even fall of rain textures the air behind the bird.
How did Koson arrange irises, lotus and water lilies?
When no bird appears, the plant carries the composition, and Koson gave each species its own structure. A clump of blue irises sends slender green leaves upward toward its blossoms near the top of the sheet. The lotus in bloom balances rising buds and blossoms against broad leaves and generous open space, so the lotus floats rather than climbs.
The close-up water lilies bring pink flowers and rounded pads near the viewer, cropped so the leaves fill the sheet. The lotus in bloom leaves more room around its forms. The water lilies feel intimate and near, while the lotus stays at a quieter distance.
The azalea in bloom follows branching stems toward red blossoms, unlike the straighter rise of the iris leaves. In each case, the way a plant grows becomes part of the composition. Koson drew that growth, and the carver and printer kept it clear.
How did Koson depict koi and goldfish?
Fish gave Koson an even emptier stage than birds. The pair of goldfish glide through broad blue water with gentle ripples, and the fish themselves are the entire event. A lone carp floats in blue-green water with the rest of the sheet left open. Two fish move together, while one has the whole width of water to itself.
Neither fish image needs a drawn shore to suggest movement. The ripples and the position of the bodies do all the work. By contrast, the three fishing boats on still water sit spaced across expanses of water and sky, giving the scene a horizon and a scale the fish images leave out.
Boats at sunset goes further and names its setting with a low red sun above simplified boats. The fish stay in a world without landmarks, while the boats belong to a particular hour and a particular weather. Together they show how much a sheet of water could be made to say.
How to choose and frame a Koson print at home
These prints bring different kinds of quiet to a room, and a tall print suits a narrow wall. For a strip beside a door, the paulownia branch at A3 in a light pine frame gives its rising branch room to climb. Blue irises at A2 in a white aluminium frame follow the tall leaves and blossoms upward, and suit a wall that needs height rather than width.
On a principal wall, the peacock with its tail spread needs the largest sheet so the broad fan holds together from across the room. At A1 in a golden aluminium frame, its fan becomes the focal point of the room. For a smaller spot, the winter nandina at A3 in a black pine frame gathers two blue birds and snow-tipped berries into something you can live with above a console.
Beside a reading chair, an image with open space is easier to glance at between pages. The blooming lotus at A2 in a pale pine frame keeps generous space around the buds. The water-lily close-up at A3 in an aluminium frame in white brings pink blossoms and rounded pads closer, which suits a wall you look at from a sitting distance.
The red azalea at A4 in a black aluminium frame suits a desk wall, where its branching red flowers add colour without crowding the workspace. Above a sideboard, this print of two goldfish crossing the blue field at A2 opens into rippling water, and the fish seem to move every time you glance at them. You can browse all of these, and the rest of the range, in our Ohara Koson collection. Each poster is printed in our Barcelona workshop on 230 gsm matte fine art paper with archival pigment inks, so the pale grounds stay even and the open water keeps its soft gradations.
Did you know?
- Koson also made battle prints during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, a sharp departure from the birds and flowers he returned to afterwards.
- The publisher Watanabe Shōzaburō also published Kawase Hasui and Itō Shinsui, the two best-known shin-hanga landscape and figure designers.
- Ernest Fenollosa, curator of Japanese art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, asked Koson to send many of his bird-and-flower prints to the United States.
- The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam holds a white peacock print by Koson.
- His Hōson prints were issued by the publishing firm Sakai and Kawaguchi.
- In 1933 Koson designed a print of a cat watching a bowl of goldfish.
Questions people ask about Ohara Koson
How can I tell an early Koson print from a later one? Look for the signature and the publisher's seal on the print. Early designs usually carry the name Koson with the seal of a publisher such as Daikokuya, the house run by Matsuki Heikichi. From the mid-1920s, designs often bear Shōson with Watanabe Shōzaburō's seal, while prints for Sakai and Kawaguchi are signed Hōson. Checking the signature against the seal is a surer guide than the date alone.
Why is the same artist called Koson, Shōson and Hōson? He changed his art name with different publishers and periods. Collectors use the signature as a clue: Koson marks the early prints, Shōson the Watanabe prints from the mid-1920s, and Hōson the prints for other publishers in the same years. All three names belong to the same person.
Which is the most famous Ohara Koson peacock print? The white peacock with its tail spread is the one to look for. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam holds an impression. Our reproduction of the white peacock is best in the largest size with a gold metal frame, where the broad fan has room to show its full spread.
Did Ohara Koson only draw birds? No. He made flower prints, fish, boats and cats, and during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 he designed battle scenes. The nature subjects are the work he kept returning to, and they're what he is remembered for now.
What does Ohara Koson's artwork include? It includes painted scrolls in ink and colour as well as designs for woodblock prints. The paintings show the same birds and plants as the prints, but they're one-off works, while the print designs were translated by carvers and printers into editions.
Where can I see or buy Ohara Koson fish prints? You can search the Rijksmuseum and the British Museum online collections for his fish prints. Our Ohara Koson collection includes the koi, the two goldfish and several waterside scenes. The fish designs use the same open water and restrained colour as his bird prints.
Posters from our collection
- Nandina flowers (Ohara Koson, 1910)
- Flowering Water Lily (Ohara Koson, 1910)
- Flowering azalea (Ohara Koson, 1930)
- Two Goldfishes (Ohara Koson, 1910)
About the author
Moryarty was founded in 2015, and we now look after a collection of more than 2,000 vintage posters and prints. Our team finds images in museums, libraries and private collections, restores them by hand without changing the original drawing or colours, and prints each one in our Barcelona workshop with archival pigment inks. If you ever pass one of our shops in Barcelona or Lisbon, you can see the range in person.