People

Hodaka's treatment of the human figure followed his broader trajectory away from representational depiction toward abstracted, schematic forms. A composition titled "People" does not function as portraiture or genre scene in the [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga) or [yakusha-e](/glossary/yakusha-e) traditions of Edo-period printmaking, but rather as a meditation on collective form — figures reduced to outlines, silhouettes, or color fields arranged across the picture plane. The mokuhanga technique allowed Hodaka to layer translucent washes alongside flat opaque areas, producing tonal variation within ostensibly simple shapes. Influences absorbed during his travels in Mexico and his engagement with international modernism — particularly the sculptural vocabulary of Henry Moore, the figuration of Paul Klee, and pre-Columbian art — informed Hodaka's approach to the human form as totem rather than likeness. Such works place him within the postwar generation of Japanese printmakers who sought to participate in international currents while extending the technical vocabulary of woodblock printing beyond its inherited subjects.