Yoshijiro Urushibara (1888-1953) was a Japanese artist who came to London in 1907 and lived in England and France for the next twenty-seven years. He collaborated with the painter Sir Frank Brangwyn on several commissions for book illustrations but their most notable works together were two portfolios of prints. These were woodblock prints of Bruges (1919) and Ten Woodcuts by Yoshijiro Urushibara after designs by Frank Brangwyn (1924).
Brangwyn thought very highly of Urushibara’s work and said, He did a good deal of work with me – made coloured woodcuts after my watercolours – so good were some of ‘em it was difficult to tell the difference between the original. The two artists even worked together when Urushibara returned to Japan after the start of World War II when they produced a third portfolio of prints called Leaves from the Sketch Books of Frank Brangwyn. In the opinion of Laurence Binyon, Urushibara’s prints were at least the equal of those of earlier Japanese masters such as Utamaro and Hokusai.
