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Human beings communicate in many different ways ? by sound, by voice, by physical contact. Yet perhaps the most effective method of conveying our hopes and dreams is the use pf text and images.
Printing was developed and cultivated as a medium to communicate accurately text and images both widely and quickly. Wishing to put printing in perspective as a form of human communication, we established the Printing Museum, Tokyo.
The many forms of printing now in practice have evolved through a long-running struggle to create methods that enable people to convey their hopes and dreams. Fortunately, the evolving craft of printing has left in its wake a wealth of evidence of its development through the centuries up to the advent of the IT revolution. There are scrolls, books and prints. There are also printing tools and machinery. The Printing Museum, Tokyo has collected these artifacts, creating a variable “theater” in which one can gain an appreciation of the past and present of printing by viewing actual objects involved in the printing process.
Most distinct, in the above-mentioned “theater”, are the printing cultures of Western Europe and East Asia. Woodblock printing and letterpress printing originated independently on these unique stages and branched out in different directions. While these unique stages of printing seem to have merged in the current age of globalization, close inspection reveals differences in their traditions and expressions. Japan is a country with a unique perspective from which it can explore the cultures of both Europe and Asia, and thus we decided to establish the Printing Museum, Tokyo. This could be considered as a bold endeavor but hope that the spirit in which we undertake this challenge be understood. We welcome your constructive comments and criticisms and will make use of them for the continued development of the Printing Museum, Tokyo.
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Koichi Kabayama
Director
Printing Museum, Tokyo
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