Akamatsu Rinsaku (1878 - 1953)

Akamatsu Rinsaku was born in Tsuyama City in Okayama Prefecture. He studied Western-style painting at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, and in 1903 he announced his intention to design Thirty-six Views of Osaka, a project he concluded in 1947. He began his career as an illustrator with the Osaka Asahi Shimbun, in which capacity he got to know the other artists that were to collaborate on the 1916 series Hanshin Meisho Zue, the first commercially undertaken landscape series of the 20th century. Its publisher was Kanao Tanejirô. In the course of his career he taught at several art schools in Osaka; he is generally seen as a key figure in the development of the 20th century print.