Riverbank

Riverbank depicts the edge between water and inhabited land, a recurring zone in Ono's observation of the working landscape around Tokyo and its outlying industrial belts. Sosaku-hanga riverbank prints from his circle typically combine the horizontal pull of water and embankment with vertical accents — pilings, masts, factory chimneys, rail bridges — and Ono's compositions tend to flatten these elements into bold tonal blocks. As a self-carved and self-printed mokuhanga, the sheet would show the directional grain of the cherry block beneath layers of sumi and color, with knife marks left visible as a record of the artist's hand. Ono's printmaking philosophy, articulated in the historical writing he produced alongside his prints, held that mokuhanga's value lay in this evident facture rather than in the polished refinement of commercial nishiki-e. Riverbank fits the documentary streak that ran through his work from the 1930s leftist factory prints onward, in which the working edges of the modern city were treated as serious subjects in their own right.