Riverbank

Another in Ono's extended series of riverbank studies, this print revisits the embankment motif with a different vantage and palette. The mokuhanga technique, with its capacity for subtle bokashi gradations along the water's edge, allowed Ono to register atmosphere — overcast sky, damp air, the dull sheen of an industrial channel — without resorting to descriptive detail. Construction of the image typically depends on a small number of blocks with simplified shapes, the artist accepting and exploiting irregularities in registration and inking that a commercial ukiyo-e workshop would have suppressed. As with much of Ono's mature work, the riverbank functions as a field for compositional experiment: the horizon is pushed high or low, masses are balanced asymmetrically, and human presence is implied through built structures rather than depicted figures. The print belongs to the same line of inquiry that produced his prewar urban prints, here filtered through the more contemplative idiom Ono developed from the 1950s onward.