Japanese artist Shintaro Takeda studied under Saburosuke Okada and Torura Iwamura and graduated from the Tokyo School of Fine Arts in 1913. Working as a teacher, he discovered Kogan Tobari’s tutorial of Hanga painting. Takeda’s career as a woodblock artist started in the mid-1920s. He was one of the founding members of the Kyoto Sôsaku-Hanga Kyôkai, and became a member of the Nihon Hanga Kyôkai in 1932. In the 1920s Takeda was active in the children’s free art movement under the influence of socialist ideas, which he had picked up in Moskva during the Bolshevik Revolution, where he was visiting on his way back from Europe to Japan. In Kyoto Takeda practiced these ideas by teaching at primary schools. In the 1930s he contributed to all the major Hanga magazines and portfolios.
Japan