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.