Lecture | Japanese Art between Two Worlds with Dr. Alicia Volk

Presented by the Japan Information & Culture Center, Embassy of Japan

Japanese printmaking experienced a surge in popularity and vitality immediately following World War II. This talk brings together two competing print movements—creative prints (創作版画; sōsaku hanga) and people's prints (人民版画; jinmin hanga)—in vibrant dialogue, revealing the political stakes of artistic expression in a polarizing postwar world.

Alicia Volk is Professor of Japanese Art at the University of Maryland. She is the author of Made in Japan: The Postwar Creative Print Movement (2005) and curator of the exhibition of the same name. Her award-winning book In Pursuit of Universalism: Yorozu Tetsugorō and Japanese Modern Art (2010) received the Phillips Book Prize. Her latest book, In the Shadow of Empire: Art in Occupied Japan, is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press in 2025.

If you want to learn more about sōsaku hanga, there are two wonderful exhibitions in the DMV to see this art in-person!

From November 16, 2024 to April 27, 2025, the National Museum of Asian Art will be hosting an exhibition entitled: . This exhibition explores the emergence of the sōsaku hanga movement in the early 20th century and showcases works by artists who reinvented Japanese printmaking by taking on all aspects of production themselves—designing, carving, and printing—challenging traditional roles and techniques.

From December 3, 2024, a complementary exhibition, Onchi Kōshirō, Graphic Artist: Picturing Postwar Japan, will open to the public at the Special Collections Library on the University of Maryland campus. Curated by Dr. Volk and her students, this exhibition is comprised of Onchi Kōshirō-related works from the Gordon W. Prange Collection at UMD.

This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required for security purposes. Program begins at 6:30PM. Doors open 30 minutes prior. No admittance after 7:00 PM or once seating is full. Registered guests will be seated on a first come, first served basis. Please note that seating is limited and registration does not guarantee guests a seat

Host or Publisher Japan Information & Culture Center, Embassy of Japan