Outskirts of the harbour

"Outskirts of the harbour" looks not at the active quay but at the peripheral zone where the port met the surrounding land — embankments, scattered warehouses, rail spurs, and the patches of waste ground between. This margin between industrial and rural was a subject Ono returned to often, finding in it the same austere material as the factory and dockworker prints of his prewar years. The composition likely arranges low buildings and infrastructure across a broad horizontal, with the harbour itself glimpsed only at the edge or in the distance. The mokuhanga handling would favour flat tonal blocks and carved linear accents, the wood grain of the block sometimes left visible on the printed sheet as a textural ground. As a sosaku-hanga print, every stage from key block to final impression is the artist's own work, in keeping with the movement's principles. Within Ono's harbour series, this print represents the more landscape-oriented end of his approach, where the port becomes a distant fact framed by the unremarkable terrain of its hinterland.