Children

A genre subject of urban children, likely drawn from the working-class Tokyo neighborhoods that supplied much of Ono's iconography. Where the [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga) tradition of Edo-period [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) placed elegant women at the center of the print, the [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) generation redirected genre attention toward ordinary modern subjects — laborers, students, families — and Ono's work in this vein belongs to that broader reorientation. The figures are likely treated through simplified silhouettes carved in heavy black line, with minimal modeling and a flat ground that throws the figures forward as graphic shapes. Such prints were often pulled in small editions on inexpensive [washi](/glossary/washi) for circulation through the print clubs and small magazines that sustained sosaku-hanga in the absence of a commercial publishing infrastructure. The image documents Ono's sustained interest in the human inhabitants of the industrial city whose architecture he recorded in his factory series.