A number of Western artists enthusiastically introduced the subjects, compositional devices, and motifs of ukiyo-e prints in the second half of the nineteenth century. However, in the 1890s, there emerged in Britain a group of woodcut printmakers who adopted other aspects of ukiyo-e prints, namely Japanese printmaking techniques, tools, and materials. Later, in the 1920s and 1930s, linocut printmakers also adopted some aspects of Japanese printmaking. A considerable amount of literature has been written on the colour linocuts produced by these artists and on Claude Flight, the leading figure of the movement. Most of these previous studies, however, emphasised the severe criticism expressed by Flight that the woodcut printmakers imitated Japanese printmaking techniques, thereby taking little account of the fact that Flight also incorporated some aspects of Japanese printmaking. Also, the woodcut and linocut printmakers shared a certain kind of discourse on ukiyo-e printmaking. Therefore, this article aims to reconsider British colour linocuts in the inter-war years by examining, through comparison with the woodcut printmakers, how Flight and his followers integrated certain elements of Japanese printmaking into this newly invented art form in order to promote linocut as the embodiment of ‘modernity.’