Traditional printmaking was in a state of crisis in the late 19th century. The domestic demand for Japanese prints had been eroded by the emergence of photography as a technique to produce life-like images of beauties, actors, and famous places. Consequently, during the first decade of the 20th century, printmaking had all but disappeared; the Russo-Japanese conflict (1904-1905) brought a brief surge in triptychs depicting the war, and the publishers of
illustrated novels employed artists for illustrations (sashi-e) and sometimes for the insertion of a single woodblock print as a frontispiece (kuchi-e, see ill.).

While domestic demand was elsewhere, the choicest traditional prints from the past were being exported. Thus, as people soon realized, not only was there a lack of fine prints within Japan, the prices of these prints continued to
rise due to the growing interest from abroad. At the same time, artists and publishers began to dread that the technique of woodblock print production was in danger of becoming obsolete. The dire state of printmaking caused a
young publisher, Watanabe Shōzaburō (1885-1962), to first embark on the creation of fine reproductions of the traditional Ukiyo-e by such 18th and 19th century masters as Suzuki Harunobu, Kitagawa Utamaro, Toshūsai Sharaku,
Katsushika Hokusai, and Utagawa Hiroshige.

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