Shōda Kōhō

Shōda Kōhō (庄田 耕峰, also 耕峯, Shōda Kōhō; September 25, 1877 – July 1, 1924) was a Japanese Nihonga painter, woodblock print artist, and Kyōka poet of the Meiji and Taishō eras.

Around the age of thirty, he withdrew from the art world and lived in Shitaya-ku, Kaminegishi, Go-inden, Tokyo (now Taitō-ku). Under the pen names Unnoya Hachisuke (雲廼家蜂助) and Renji Kōshi (連辞公子) he was mainly active as a poet of humorous Kyōka and Kyōshi verse. He died in Tokyo in 1924 at the age of 48. In English-language literature, there are sometimes discrepancies in biographical details.

Works Shōda Kōhō is best known internationally for his woodblock prints, especially the series Night Scenes (夜の風景, Yoru no fūkei), a collaborative set of 21 chūban-format prints published by Hasegawa-Nishinomiya beginning in the 1910s. The designs depict evening landscapes in subdued sepia or blue tones and continued to be printed into the 1930s, with reprints appearing also in the postwar era.

In addition to the Night Scenes, Shōda also contributed to the production of so-called tanzaku prints (短冊版画), also known as hashira-e (pillar prints). These narrow, vertical formats reflected the architectural spaces of traditional Japanese houses, where posts often provided the only surfaces for hanging pictures. Together with Yoshimoto Gessō, Shōda created numerous designs for Hasegawa-Nishinomiya, issued in sets of twelve prints. Approximately 96 different images have been recorded, covering a wide variety of themes and demonstrating the inventiveness required by the restricted format.