Flag

Flag depicts a banner or standard isolated as an emblematic image rather than embedded in a narrative scene. Ono's work of the 1930s engaged directly with prewar leftist iconography, and even in his postwar prints the motif of a flag carries weight as a graphic sign drawn from that earlier sensibility. Technically, such a subject lends itself to flat planes of saturated color set against black, exploiting the woodblock's capacity for clean, hard-edged form. The grain of the cherry block and the variations of baren pressure across washi register against any large color field. As a sosaku-hanga artist, Ono carved and printed the work himself rather than supervising specialist craftsmen, which gives his color editions a tactile, less uniform surface than commercial nishiki-e. The reduced subject matter—a flag alone—reflects the modernist reduction that Onchi's Ichimoku-kai circle pursued through the 1940s and 1950s, where a single object could carry the full expressive load of the print.