Noboru Sawai

Noboru Sawai is most remembered for his erotic multi-media prints. However, he was also an influential professor, who taught a generation of artists, from Cape Dorset to Israel, the process of printmaking.

Noboru Sawai was born on Feb. 18, 1931 in Takamatsu, Japan and spent his early childhood years in and around his birthplace. He learned English while working as a cook’s assistant at the U.S. military headquarters. He moved to the United States to study at the Lutheran Bible Institute, however, shortly after his arrival, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and spent the next nine years at a TB hospital in San Antonio, Texas.