Autumn in Tono

Autumn in Tono draws on the rural valley of Tono in Iwate Prefecture, the inland basin made famous by Yanagita Kunio's Tono Monogatari folktale collection and long associated in Japanese cultural memory with the archetypal countryside. The print likely shows thatched magariya farmhouses, rice fields after the harvest, and the surrounding hills in autumn coloration — the visual core of Ohtsu's subject matter. The compositional approach relies on receding planes of paddy, farmhouse, and forested ridge, each carved as a separate block and printed in flat color with bokashi where the hillsides meet the sky. Ohtsu's signature warmth comes from the ochres and russets of the cut rice straw and the oxidized reds of persimmon trees against weathered timber. Within his body of work, Tono is one of several northern locations he returns to as a referent for the rural Japan of his childhood, before postwar industrialization reshaped the agricultural landscape.