Mid Century Japanese Murakami Gyōjin Woodblock Print

Murakami Gyōjin Yoshi (Japanese,1911-1998).

‘Faggot Carrier on Forest Road’
Depicting a villager carrying loads of charcoal straw sacks, and walking on a forest road.
This design is in the collection of the Arthur M. Sackler Museum. The work is listed as “Faggot Carrier on Forest Road” by Yoshi Murakami, there.
Signed and dated in pencil in lower left recto.
Numbered 9/50 in pencil in lower right recto.
Unframed.

Murakami Gyojin was born in Inoshima, Hiroshima Prefecture. He was an avid amateur painter while working for the Hitachi Shipbuilding Company in Hiroshima and the JR Takatori Company in Kobe. As a painter he made both oil paintings and Japanese-style paintings. After the war, he felt he was given a second chance at life and started using his artist’s name (Gyojin, literally “Dawn person”).
When the Minatogawa temple in Kobe was being rebuilt in Kobe after the war, Munakata Shiko asked him to join in the project of decorating the ceiling of the prayer room. He became Munakata’s pupil and joined the Banga-in, founded by Munakata in 1952, and since 1984 better known as the Nihon Hanga-in. He started to live in Akashi city (west of Kobe), near the sea, and the theme of the sea is a recurrent theme in his work. He died on May 21st, 1998.