After setting up shop in 1906, Watanabe produced two consecutive series of what he referred to as 'recarved' (fukkoku) rather than 'reproduced' (fukusei) prints, which were sold on a subscription basis from 1915. At about
the same time, Watanabe was introduced to the watercolors of an unlikely artist, the Austrian Fritz Capelari (1884-1950). Watanabe interested Capelari in submitting designs for production with woodblocks. Watanabe published
eleven of Capelari's designs and was pleased with the results. This is generally considered the beginning of the Shin hanga (New prints) movement.

In 1915, Watanabe also involved the artist Hachiguchi Goyō in his endeavors. Goyō was interested in the history and technique of traditional Ukiyo-e and had embarked on the ambitious multi-volume series titled Customs
and manners of Ukiyo-e, which contains beautifully produced reproductions of all the great traditional artists. In the fall of 1915, they produced their first new print together titled Nude after the bath (Yokujō no onna). The outcome was apparently not satisfactory, however, because it was to remain their only joint venture.

After collaborating with Capelari and Goyō, Watanabe worked with the designer Itō Shinsui (1898-1972), and in the summer of 1916, Watanabe produced the first of a great number of prints Shinsui designed. That same
year, Kawase Hasui (1883-1957) - who studied under Kaburaki Kiyokata (1878-1973), as Shinsui had done - designed his first of over 550 landscape prints, which Watanabe would publish over a 40-year period.
Watanabe subsequently enlisted a great number of artists in his publishing house to design prints for him, and through careful marketing, he earned an estimable international reputation.

Watanabe has been given preeminence among the publishers producing fine prints based on the traditional Ukiyo-e division of labor, whereby the artist supplies a design at the request of a publisher, who then farms out the production work to a block cutter and a printer. Even at that time, however, he was by no means the only publisher to do so. The publishing pair Sakai and Kawaguchi produced the quiet beauties of artist Torii Kotondo (1900-1976), who later moved on to design his best work for the extremely competent but virtually unknown publisher Ikeda. In Kyoto, the publisher Satō Shotarō, who, like Watanabe, was a dealer in and a collector of traditional Ukiyo-e, produced the prints of, among other artists, Yoshikawa Kanpō (1894-1979) and Miki Suizan (1887-1957).

One common thread uniting all these publishers and artists is the quality of their prints; their works are all printed in the finest possible fashion. They differ from those earlier in the Meiji period in that they employ slightly heavier,
more absorbent paper. They also held incredibly high technical standards: they carved the finest lines, used the most beautiful, high-quality pigments (including mica), employed the technique of gradation printing (bokashi), and took the technique of overprinting to its extreme. In addition, they slightly enlarged the traditional öban size, especially for the prints of beauties and actors; these prints often measure more than 40 cm in height and as much as 28 cm across.

But the most important changes made during this time can be seen in form and color; the women are imbued with sentiment and character, and their positioning is kept simple, with an uncluttered background and setting. The
majority of figural prints of beauties and actors show the face or body against a plain background, often given texture by allowing traces of the baren (the rubbing instrument) to be made visible on the surface of the print. In landscape prints, the artists focus on the play of light, as seen in the reflection of the moon, the shimmering beam of a lantern on waves, or the morning sun bathing the landscape in fragile hues. Furthermore, the warrior print, which was still prominent earlier in the Meiji period, virtually disappeared. Along with it, the diptych and triptych format vanished.

Watanabe and the other publishers were extremely successful. They were, to place them in context, however, the first generation of publishers who were producing for a new market; thousands of prints found their way abroad,
particularly to the United States. Many of these publishers made Englishlanguage catalogs, and Watanabe and Satö Shotarö even staged exhibitions in the United States, such as their famous shows in Toledo, Ohio in 1930 and 1936.

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