Although Masumi Ishikawa took avidly to drawing at a young age, it didn’t occur to him that he could make art his career.

A landscape from the battle scene on the planet Hoth. Although the sky is blue in the film, Ishikawa designed the print in the style of Hiroshige’s snow scenes. 'The beams from the snowspeeders only flash for a split second, so I had to watch the sequence frame by frame quite a few times to capture them,' he says. | 'UKIYO-E STAR WARS BATTLE OF HOTH' ©&TM LUCASFILM LTD.
A landscape from the battle scene on the planet Hoth. Although the sky is blue in the film, Ishikawa designed the print in the style of Hiroshige’s snow scenes. 'The beams from the snowspeeders only flash for a split second, so I had to watch the sequence frame by frame quite a few times to capture them,' he says. | 'UKIYO-E STAR WARS BATTLE OF HOTH' ©&TM LUCASFILM LTD.

The turning point came when he saw a television special about ukiyo-e artist Utagawa Toyokuni VI, promptly got in touch and showed the master some of his work, becoming an apprentice soon after. Unfortunately, the 97-year-old Utagawa died just a few months later, leaving Ishikawa to learn the art of ukiyo-e on his own.