Clock tower

The clock tower returns Ono to the urban subject matter that defined his prewar practice. In the 1930s he produced a body of stark, high-contrast prints documenting the industrial landscape of Tokyo — factories, workers, rail infrastructure — informed by the leftist current that ran through one strand of the sosaku-hanga movement. A clock tower fits that vocabulary: an architectural subject combining geometric structure with civic or commercial association, rendered in the medium's graphic register of carved line and flat tone. Ono's typical handling of such subjects involves a strong black key block carrying the structural drawing, with limited additional color used sparingly for tonal weight rather than naturalistic effect. The mokuhanga surface preserves the carved mark distinctly, so window openings, masonry joints, and the clock face itself read as cut shapes rather than depicted details. Within his oeuvre the print belongs alongside the prewar Tokyo cityscapes — the same observational interest in built form and the same conviction that the woodblock medium, self-carved and self-printed, was adequate to modern subjects.