Album of New Year cards 1942

Compiled at the start of the Pacific War, this 1942 album gathers small-format New Year cards produced for exchange among members of Onchi's Ichimokukai print circle. The slug's reference to saru (monkey) is a generic identifier in the catalog rather than the year's zodiac sign — 1942 was the Year of the Horse — and the cards inside likely combine zodiac imagery, abstract emblems, and brushed-style numerals carved directly into the block. Onchi's nengajo of this period tend to be self-printed editions of a few dozen impressions, pulled by hand on thin [washi](/glossary/washi) with limited pigment, often a single [sumi](/glossary/sumi) key block accented by one or two flat color blocks. The album format preserves contributions from multiple artists side by side, allowing comparison between Onchi's increasingly geometric abstractions and the more representational cards by colleagues such as Hiratsuka Un'ichi and Maekawa Senpan. These exchanges were the practical engine of [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) community life and a laboratory for the abstract vocabulary Onchi later developed at full sheet scale.