Natural history

Onchi's prints carrying the title Natural history belong to a strain of his work in which botanical or zoological subjects are abstracted into reduced, almost diagrammatic compositions. Rather than the descriptive realism of Edo-period [kacho-e](/glossary/kacho-e), these images treat leaves, seedpods, shells, or insects as formal motifs — silhouettes set against flat planes of color, sometimes inflected with [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradation along an edge. The carving typically preserves visible tool marks and wood grain, and the printing relies on hand pressure with a [baren](/glossary/baren) rather than a press, producing the slight unevenness Onchi prized as evidence of the maker's hand. Works in this vein reflect his sustained interest in organic form as a source for abstract composition, an interest he shared with European modernists whose work he encountered through imported books and journals. The Natural history pieces sit between his more emphatically abstract compositions and the lyrical portraiture for which he is also known, and they demonstrate the breadth of subject matter [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) could absorb.