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by Cristina Berna (Author), Eric Thomsen (Author)
Ohara Koson (also Ohara Hōson, Ohara Shōson) (Kanazawa 1877 - Tokyo 1945) was a Japanese painter and woodblock print designer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, at the forefront of shinsaku-hanga and shin-hanga art movements.
Ohara Koson studied painting and design at the Ishikawa Prefecture Technical School in 1889-1893. He also studied painting with Suzuki Kason (1860-1919), although accounts differ on whether this happened during his school years or after he moved to Tokyo in the middle to late 1890s.
In 1904, Koson created prints depicting the Russo-Japanese War, see authors book Russo-Japanese War. This was a common practice among ukiyo-e artists during that time, as many of them produced illustration prints related to either the Sino-Japanese War (1894/95) or the Russo-Japanese War (1904/05), see authors books Sino-Japanese War and Russo-Japanese War.
Despite the decline of ukiyo-e, Ohara Koson managed to maintain financial stability due to his position as a teacher at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, where Koson encountered Ernest Fenellosa, an American advocate of traditional Japanese art.
