Tsuchiya Koitsu

Announcing the imminent release of the first comprehensive English language catalogue raisonne of Tsuchiya Koitsu prints:


The Catalogue Raisonne of Tsuchiya Koitsu
Meiji to Shin-Hanga, Watercolours to Woodblocks

Catalogue Raisonne of Tsuchiya Koitsu Not just a catalogue, but an important research text for any series shin-hanga collector!


  • Large 26 x 30cm (w x h) cloth hard cover volume. About 450 pages;
  • Dust jacket and cloth slip case;
  • Over 300 woodblock prints, watercolours and lithographs in full colour. Most prints are individually displayed on a full page.
  • Many previously unseen works of art (including lithographs, and double-oban Doi-published woodblock prints!);
  • Six separate publisher chapters, and many research and reference articles;
  • Comprehensive seals, signatures, and watermarks chapters;
  • Includes Japanese translation (全チャプター の邦訳も付いてます!)
  • Target shipping date: late January, 2009.
  • Target price: US$150 plus shipping.
  • Some of the details you see here may change slightly by the time of publication.


This baby is long overdue, and comes in at a whopping 4kg+ because we've aimed for a works of the highest quality, with cloth slip case, embossed cloth covers, and premium-quality heavy-weight high-gloss pages. Because shipping costs will be a little expensive (around $30 for Sea Mail from Japan) we've decided to keep the sale price well below that of a book of equivalent quality and content.

The first 200 copies will be personally editioned and signed by me (Ross Walker). Like Hotei's Kawase Hasui catalogue, we expect this edition of the Koitsu catalogue to be out-of-print well before any second edition is considered. Copies will be editioned and shipped in the same order that orders are received (first in, first served). To secure your copy, please click the "Pre-order the Koitsu catalogue" button below.

Want to be notified of our catalogue's publication?

If you would like to be notified via email when our new catalogue is shipping, please send me an email by clicking here.
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Take a sneak peek below (a selection of pages from the catalogue):

Please note that the images you see in the "sneak peek" files below are low-resolution versions. The printed catalogue will of course contain full-colour high-resolution images.

Update December 28, 2008

I have just received the first bound copy of the catalogue complete with shipping box. Everything looks in order so I will now start accepting pre-orders. Please note that first shipments of the catalogue will not occur until around late January.

Update December 12, 2008

On Tuesday the 9th I spent the day in Tokyo watching the Koitsu catalogue being printed. It's really an amazing process and I wasn't prepared for the amount of paper it takes to print such a large book. These huge printing machines shown below can align four separate colour plates (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) to within about 0.1mm; I'm amazed. They print four pages on one sheet. We printed 11 sheets (44 pages) during that day, so printing all 450 pages takes about 10 days.

Getting the colours right prior to printing is an expensive process. Each colour adjustment/check printing cycle costs about $10,000, and several were required. Also, we decided to pay for custom-made packaging to ensure the catalogues arrive safely at the customer end even if they are shipped via sea mail. As a result the final cost blew out a bit, so we're targeting a price of $150 per book.

Target date for shipping will be late January 2009. The catalogue itself will be finished on Christmas day, but after that the outside slipcase and shipping boxes will be manufactured to fit the book, and will take the extra time.

Mitsubishi printer
The 'output' end of the huge Mitsubishi printer used to print the Koitsu catalogue
Mitsubishi printer
Colour ckecking on the printer control panel
Mitsubishi printer
Hot off the press! Stacks of 4-page sheets
Mitsubishi printer


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