Bridge

Bridge presents the motif in distilled form, untethered from a place name or a specific viewpoint indicated in the title. This reduction sits comfortably with the modernist tendency in sosaku-hanga to treat a single structure as sufficient subject in itself, a sensibility shared with Onchi's later abstract work and the Ichimoku-kai circle in which Ono moved. The print would rely on the structural geometry of the bridge—piers, deck, railings—handled as graphic shape rather than detailed architectural record. As a hand-cut, hand-printed work, the impression carries the texture of the cherry block and the variation of baren pressure across washi, qualities that distinguish it from commercial nishiki-e of any earlier period. Within Ono's body of work, the unnamed Bridge functions as the type-image for a long series of related prints, anchoring the recurring motif that ran from his early socially-charged 1930s prints through the postwar decades of his career.