Ox

A third treatment of the ushi character, completing a sequence in which Maki Haku tests the limits of how a single ideogram can be inflected through technical means. Variations among the three impressions involve color (a shift from sumi black toward iron oxide red or earth ochre), the orientation and proportion of the block within the sheet, and the depth of carving—shallower relief produces a flatter, more graphic reading while deeper carving emphasizes the character's sculptural autonomy. The serial approach was central to Maki's working method from the late 1960s onward: rather than treating each print as a discrete image, he treated his blocks as ongoing investigations whose outputs accumulated into typologies. The ox, as zodiac sign and agrarian emblem, gave him a culturally legible kanji that he could push toward formal abstraction without surrendering recognition. Each impression renegotiates that balance between ideogram and constructed object.