Niju Bashi Bridge

A further impression in Onchi's Niju Bashi Bridge group, this print continues his architectural reduction of the Imperial Palace bridge into planar tonal areas. The compositional logic — twin arches, their reflection in the moat below, and the embankment's horizontal anchor — gave Onchi a stable scaffolding on which to test color relationships. Unlike the atmospheric treatments earlier hanga artists like Yoshida Hiroshi gave the same site, Onchi's Niju Bashi prints retreat from observed detail to formal essentials, in line with the European modernist sensibility he absorbed through his early reading of Western art journals and Symbolist poetry. The print exemplifies the sosaku-hanga commitment to autographic carving: mark-making is visible in the cut edges of the blocks, and the ink does not aim to disguise the woodgrain. Onchi's bridges sit alongside his lyric portraits and abstract compositions as the architectural pole of his practice.