Spring Goddess

A standalone goddess figure associated with seasonal renewal, rendered with the voluptuous proportions characteristic of Oda's pantheon of female deities. Spring goddess iconography crosses cultures — Persephone, Saraswati, native Japanese kami — and Oda's syncretic approach allows her to channel any of these traditions into a single image. The figure likely appears among blossoming branches or floral fields, the body itself a symbol of fertility and seasonal awakening. Mokuhanga technique, with its flat color planes printed from carved cherry-wood blocks (yamazakura) and the soft variation possible through bokashi gradation, suits Oda's stylized rendering of the female body. Unlike Edo-period bijin-ga, which emphasized fashionable courtesans and tea-house girls, Oda's beauties are mythological and frontally presented at heroic scale. The work belongs to the broader feminist printmaking turn of the 1970s and 80s, in which Oda was an early figure.