Shin-hanga was an art movement in early 20th-century Japan, during the Taishō and Shōwa periods, that revitalized traditional ukiyo-e art rooted in the Edo and Meiji periods. It maintained the traditional ukiyo-e collaborative system where the artist, carver, printer, and publisher engaged in division of labor, as opposed to the parallel sōsaku-hanga movement which advocated the principles of "self-drawn", "self-carved" and "self-printed", according to which the artist, with the desire of expressing the self, is the sole creator of art.
The movement was initiated and nurtured by publisher Watanabe Shozaburo, and flourished from around 1915 to 1942, resuming on a smaller scale after the Second World War through the 1950 and 1960s. Inspired by European Impressionism, the artists incorporated Western elements such as the effects of light and the expression of individual moods, but focused on strictly traditional themes of landscapes, famous places, beautiful women, kabuki actors, and birds-and-flowers.