Obi

Taking the obi — the broad sash that secures a kimono — as its subject, this print likely treats the textile as a field of pattern, color, and folded geometry rather than as a costume detail. The obi's strong horizontal mass and decorative motifs offered Onchi a ready-made abstract structure, and his mokuhanga technique allowed him to translate woven patterning into registered blocks of flat color and bokashi gradation on washi. By isolating the sash from the wearer, the print pushes a traditional Japanese subject toward modernist still life, a move characteristic of Onchi's sosaku-hanga sensibility. As one of the movement's founders, he insisted that the artist alone should design, carve, and print the work, and prints such as this demonstrate how he reframed familiar Japanese motifs through a personal, non-narrative formal language. The image sits alongside his greenhouse and interior compositions as part of a wider effort to find abstract pictorial structure in everyday Japanese material culture.