11 Facts About Chosei Kawakami

Chosei Kawakami was a Japanese painter and print maker.

Chosei Kawakami's work was part of the painting event in the art competition at the 1932 Summer Olympics.

Chosei Kawakami learned to draw from Shodai Tameshige at the Aoyama Junior High School.

Chosei Kawakami made his first print in 1912: and adaptation of a frontispiece drawn by the playwright Mokutaro Kinoshita for a play called "Izumiya Dyeing Shop".

Chosei Kawakami started to submit his works to a local journals starting from 1913.

Chosei Kawakami spent a year in Canada and the US, working at various jobs, that included a salmon cannery in Alaska and house painting in Seattle.

Chosei Kawakami returned to Japan in 1918, when he learned that his younger brother, Washiro, was dying.

Chosei Kawakami then created more than 30 other books of woodcuts, which he mostly printed by himself.

Chosei Kawakami said he was mostly self-taught, though he had attended an art school in his childhood.

Chosei Kawakami then adopted a method of carving only the keyblock while brushing on colors by hand.

Chosei Kawakami was against Japanese militarism; during the Second World War he lost his job as the Ministry of Education banned the teaching of English language in schools.