Moonlight, Driftwood, and the Power of Reika IWAMI’s Woodblocks

Afternoon of the Horizon, 1978 (image courtesy of The Hilary Tolman Collection of Post War Japanese Prints, Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA)

At The Tolman Collection, we’ve been privileged to work, and build strong personal relationships, with some of the most extraordinary artists in the world of contemporary Japanese printmaking. Reika IWAMI (1927–2020) left a lasting impression. Though petite in frame, she was a force in her craft and in person.

At first, Reika-san seemed quiet and gentle, the epitome of prim and proper. Below the surface however was a different person – a very deliberate one, full of quiet determination, uncompromising in her artistic principles. She was among the very first artists the Tolman Collection represented and, from the start, she stood apart through the sheer power of her work. Her background in haiku - she wrote one daily - seems present in much of her work. She believed that the discipline of verse taught her the art of “eliminating what is not necessary” in her art and you can feel that in every one of her prints. Everything is intentional.

Reika-san in our living room, 1975

Born in Tokyo in 1927, Reika-san began her artistic life, not as a printmaker, but as a doll-maker. That early training in form and tactility shaped the way she approached printmaking when she turned to it in the 1950s, inspired by Kōshirō ONCHI, Jun’ichirō SEKINO, and especially Takumi SHINAGAWA. Reika-san’s work is not simply visual - it’s deeply physical, with a strong connection to nature. Growing up by the sea, she worked with real pieces of driftwood that she gathered from the beach outside her home, pressed fishing nets into her handmade paper, and embedded metal leaf into her compositions. Her textured, embossed prints feel alive. They’re snapshots of elemental forces: wind skimming over wood, waves crashing onto themselves, moonlight caressing the surface of an angry sea. They represent her well – quiet and elegant at first glance and then, over time and with further observation, forceful in their emotional range and unyielding in their artistic integrity.

Horizons B, 1973 (image courtesy of The Hilary Tolman Collection of Post War Japanese Prints, Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA)

Reika-san was deeply committed to her work and to the craft of printmaking as a discipline, especially in creating opportunities for women. In 1956, she helped found the Women’s Print Association (Joryu Hanga Kai), an act of quiet defiance in a world that often left women artists sidelined. But she never seemed to push. She simply made extraordinary work and let it speak for her. She exhibited regularly in major art biennales and international shows and, today, her work lives on in institutions such as the British Museum, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and with strong representation in the Japanese print collection of the Smith College Museum of Art.

Sea - Evening Calm, 1963 (image courtesy of The Lavenberg Collection of Japanese Prints., Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon)

Our relationship with Reika spanned decades, filled with visits, exhibitions, many, many conversations over tea, and a very memorable Christmas in Paris where I lost her while visiting the Louvre. After searching for her more and more frantically, I finally returned to the apartment where we were staying and broke down in tears to announce to my parents that I had misplaced the artist with whom I had been entrusted. We all tried not to let our emotions get the best of us but who should we contact? The police? The Japanese embassy? Should we all go back to the Louvre and scour each room again? Had our diminutive artist been kidnapped or led astray? A few hours later, as true panic began to set in, Reika-san turned up, completely unbothered and quite unapologetic. She had spent those hours wandering, enthralled by the work in the museum and was serene, brimming with stories of her solo exploration. She had the address of where we were staying in her purse just in case, remembered the twenty minute walk we had taken to the museum well enough to undertake it in reverse, and had simply made her way back to us when SHE was done. She wasn’t worried that she had lost me or that she was in a strange city where she did not speak the language, she was perfectly content to finish our visit on her own, fully immersed in the moment. That anecdote feels like her art: completely self-contained, unhurried, and deeply observant.

With Reika-san and my mother, Paris, 1979

Reika passed away in March 2020, just shy of her 93rd birthday. Her work, however, feels as alive as ever because it is truly timeless. In today’s noisy world, where we are always hectically rushing, Reika-san’s stunning pieces often serve to remind me that there is power in stillness, beauty in restraint, and strength in choosing quiet over noise.

Fantasy of Okhotsk, 1981 (image courtesy of The Hilary Tolman Collection of Post War Japanese Prints, Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA)