Ditch

Ditch belongs to a recurring subject in Ono's output: drainage channels, canals, and the marginal waterways that run through Tokyo's industrial neighborhoods. Such subjects fit the sosaku-hanga current that turned away from the picturesque categories of meisho-e and bijin-ga toward overlooked urban edges, in keeping with the leftist social consciousness Ono shared with peers in the 1930s Ichimoku-kai circle. The compositional approach typically frames the ditch as a strong oblique line cutting through built-up shorelines — corrugated walls, tenement backs, planks, scaffolding — rendered in carved blacks against grays of bokashi water. As the second of multiple prints sharing this title, the work likely revisits the motif with variations in vantage or framing, a common practice among sosaku-hanga artists who developed motifs serially rather than as one-off compositions. Hand-printed onto washi, the surface preserves the immediate evidence of the artist's carving and pressure with the baren.