Sea birds

Likely a flock of gulls or terns distributed across an open expanse of water and sky. In the sosaku-hanga tradition Ono inherited from the Ichimoku-kai circle, the artist carved his own blocks and pulled impressions by hand with a baren, so each sheet carries subtle variations in ink density across the washi. The print probably favors silhouette and graphic flatness over naturalistic rendering, reflecting Ono's commitment to woodblock as an autonomous expressive medium rather than a vehicle for illusionistic depiction. Such kacho-e subjects became a recurring motif in Ono's postwar work, a shift from the documentary factory and worker scenes of his 1930s prints. His seabird compositions typically scatter small dark forms across a tonal field, producing rhythmic visual movement rather than the centered single-bird focus of nineteenth-century kacho-e by predecessors such as Hiroshige and Koson.