Juzo Takaoka

He died on September 15, 2017, at the age of 96 in Tokyo.

In 2014, Kono contributed an article about Takaoka's long career as letterpress printer to Matrix 32, which is published by the Whittington Press. For the article, John Randle of the Whittington Press wrote an introduction in which he says:

From 1998 to 2002, Takaoka served as adviser to the Printing House, a printing workshop operated by the Printing Museum, Tokyo, of Toppan Printing Co., Ltd.

In 1995, Takaoka became advisor to the Kazui Press, and his son, Masao, took over the presidency. In the same year, Takaoka was conferred the title of Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Eiichi Kono, who is known for his design of the New Johnston typeface for London Underground and the Meiryo type for Microsoft, attended Friday Salon, and his longtime student-teacher relationship with Takaoka continued to this day. Akira Kobayashi, type director at Monotype GmbH, has also looked up to Takaoka as his mentor since their first meeting in the 1990s. Both Kono and Kobayashi travelled to Europe with Takaoka many times to visit places of relevance to typography.

Takaoka received the Overseas Award in both 1975 and 1984 and the Printer of the Year Award ’89 in 1990 from BPS.

In 1970, Takaoka made his first trip abroad to meet members of the BPS in London, bringing with him his latest letterpress work, Ars Typographica 1, and his business card, which was set in American Uncial. He traveled on from there to Frankfurt, Germany, to visit the D. Stempel AG type foundry to buy the Optima typeface designed by Hermann Zapf, who was then type director at Stempel. After returning home from Europe, Takaoka received a letter from Stempel saying that Zapf was very impressed with his printing and would like to meet him when he visited Germany again. In 1972, Takaoka and Eiichi Kono (see below for profile) traveled to Germany together with a group of Japanese printers to visit the Drupa trade fair, the world's largest printing equipment exhibition. During their stay, Takaoka met Zapf for the first time. After that, they visited each other a number of times and became lifelong friends.

My Study of Letterpress Typography, a collection of Takaoka's letterpress studies created mainly in the 1970s, was published in 2013.

Takaoka's letterpress studies in the 1970s were highly regarded overseas for the high level of skill and understanding of Western typography that they demonstrated. These works are included in My Study of Letterpress Typography.

Without Inouye, however, Takaoka was increasingly unsure about his Western typographic skills. He had never been to the United Kingdom or any other part of Europe. In order to keep abreast of the latest trends in typography and maintain his unique status in Japan, he joined the British Printing Society (BPS) in 1965. His printed specimens made a strong impression on the BPS members, including Kenneth Hardacre of the Kit-Cat Press, John Easson of the Quarto Press, and Paul Peter Piech of the Taurus Press, all of whom became his lifelong friends.

Between the mid-1960s and the 1980s, Takaoka ran a typography workshop called “Friday Salon” every Friday for a small number of young design students and graduates as well as amateur printers.

In 1956, when Inouye died, Takaoka took over the printing shop and made it into a limited company called the Kazui Press Limited. Takaoka's reputation as a letterpress printer was well established by then, and he was chosen to print certificates for the 1964 Tokyo Olympic medalists.

The many Western typefaces that Inouye collected during his posting in London were stored at the Kazui Press, but all of them were destroyed during the war. Inouye decided to reconstruct his printing shop after the war ended, and he entrusted much of the project to Takaoka. Upon receiving this request from Inouye, Takaoka left his work at Hosokawa Printing Co., Ltd., in Ginza, Tokyo, and set to creating a new printing shop for Inouye. In 1948, with funding from Inouye, the Kazui Press was reopened in Kanda-Kajicho, Tokyo. Busy with his primary job at the shipping company, Inouye entrusted an increasing amount of work to Takaoka, and the Kazui Press began to accept more commercial printing work. Helped by Inouye's acquaintances as well as by large orders from GHQ, Takaoka's business flourished.

In 1941, as World War II was spreading, Inouye and Takaoka were asked to cooperate in the production of Japan's war propaganda magazine Front by Tohosha, a publisher under the direct control of the Imperial Japanese Army.

In 1937, Takaoka read a short magazine article that would change his life. It was about the poor standard of Western typography in Japan and was written by Yoshimitsu Inouye (also known as Kazui Inoue), Takaoka's future teacher and mentor. Inouye, a lover of Western letterpress printing, worked in London between 1934 and 1939 as representative of major Japanese shipping company Nippon Yusen. While overseas, he developed expertise in Western typography and acquired a small printing press and types, enough to become an amateur printer. In January 1937, Inouye contributed the article to Japan's leading printing magazine, Insatsu Zasshi. His article had a strong impact on Japanese progressive printers and compositors of the time, inspiring them to form the Study Group on Western Typography so that they could learn directly from Inouye. Takaoka joined this group and was its youngest member. On February 17, 1940, the Study Group held its first meeting.

Enthralled by Inouye's lectures, Takaoka desperately wanted to become Inouye's apprentice. He persistently went to his home with work samples in hand to seek his permission. Though he was repeatedly turned away, Takaoka was finally accepted as Inouye's disciple in 1940 thanks to the mediation of Inouye's wife, Kimiko. He was the only member of the Study Group to be accepted as an apprentice.

Juzo Takaoka (高岡 重蔵, Takaoka Jūzō, January 18, 1921–September 15, 2017) was a Japanese letterpress printer specializing in Western typesetting. He was advisor to the Kazui Press Limited, a letterpress company in Tokyo, Japan, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, UK.

Juzo Takaoka was born in Tokyo in 1921. His father was a traditional Japanese bookbinder. Never caring much about money, his father was always poor, as were most craftspersons in those days. He paid little attention to his son's education.