Two Kansai region men suspected of illegally reproducing prints of works by famed Japanese artists such as Ikuo Hirayama and Kaii Higashiyama were arrested Monday by Tokyo police.
Yuzo Kato, 53, a former art dealer of Ikeda, Osaka Prefecture, and Masashi Kitahata, 67, a hanga art printing company president of Yamatokoriyama, Nara Prefecture, were taken into custody by the Metropolitan Police Department.
Police suspect the two of making large profits through the sale of counterfeit art and are continuing their investigation to more fully determine their roles in the case.
According to investigative sources, the two allegedly violated the Copyright Law by making a total of seven copies of five works by the late Higashiyama from mid-January in 2017 to early January 2019 without permission from his surviving family, which owns the copyrights to his works. Among the works was the landscape painting titled "Hakuba no Mori" (forest of the white horse).
The fake prints are believed to have been crafted through lithography in the studio of Kitahata's company in Yamatokoriyama.
The fake art was discovered to be in circulation last year as a result of a probe by the Contemporary Graphic Art Dealers Association of Japan and other entities. During the investigation, Kato admitted to forging prints of a combined 10 works by Hirayama, Higashiyama and Tamako Kataoka.
Last December, the MPD searched Kato's home, his company office in Osaka which was used for storage, and other locations. The police seized about 80 prints by six Japanese artists, including Hirayama, and six foreign masters, such as Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall.
A subsequent appraisal confirmed that prints of other works besides the original 10 were also fakes. The counterfeit prints were exquisite in detail, but could be differentiated from the originals through the stamps of the artists and the quality of the paper.
In January this year, the MPD requested financial institutions freeze a total of about 620 million yen in accounts held by Kato's company, on the pretext that the amount may contain illegal proceeds. The MPD believes the suspects earned huge profits by selling the counterfeit art at high prices.
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