DDT before disembarkation

"DDT before disembarkation" records one of the more invasive rituals imposed on Japanese civilians returning from the Asian mainland after the surrender of August 1945. Allied occupation authorities, fearing typhus carried by lice, sprayed each repatriate with the pesticide DDT before permitting them to leave the ship. Kitaoka himself was repatriated from occupied Manchuria in 1946, having been sent to work with the Northeast Asia Culture Development Society in the closing months of the war. The print belongs to a small, eyewitness group within his oeuvre that documents the indignities and uncertainties of postwar displacement — a register of lived experience rather than meisho-e topographic celebration. Compositionally, scenes of this kind typically employ tight framing of huddled figures, strong silhouetted outlines from the key block, and a restrained palette suited to grim subject matter. Working in the sosaku-hanga tradition of jiga, jikoku, jizuri (self-drawn, self-carved, self-printed), Kitaoka treated the medium as a vehicle for personal historical witness rather than for picturesque or commercial subjects.