Sakuichi Fukazawa

Sakuichi Fukazawa was a printmaker from Tokyo, producing prints and book jackets first in a Western style and later in a Japanese style. He attended the Central School of Commerce and Industry in Kyoto and began making woodblock prints in 1918. From 1922 he exhibited with the Japan Creative Print Association and became a member in 1928. In 1931 he was a founding member of the Japan Print Association and contributed 13 prints to the 8-artist series One Hundred Views of New Tokyo.

The print titled The Baseball Match ‘Waseda vs. Keio in Autumn 1931’ (19.7 x 26.7 cm) was published by Nihon Sôsaku Hanga Kyôkai in 1931. The woodblock print was number 86 of a series of which 50 copies were printed. The six oldest and most prestigious universities, including Waseda and Keio, formed a baseball league in 1925, at the time the highest league in the country. One of the woodblock prints submitted in Berlin 1936 four years later was Wrestling (Su-mo). The dynamic sketch, which is rare among Fukazawa’s works, with bodies colliding, is in The Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art.