A Spring, from the series "Happiness"

From the early series "Happiness," this 1916 spring print represents Onchi at the very beginning of his career — still a student at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, already committed to the sosaku-hanga principle that the artist should design, carve, and print their own work. The composition marks spring not through conventional cherry blossoms or seasonal landscapes but through an abstract or lyrical impression of the season's quality: the renewal of life rendered in terms of pure color and form. This early work established the vocabulary of feeling-over-representation that would define Onchi's mature abstract output.