Umimura

A coastal village seen from a vantage that takes in both the built settlement and the surrounding sea, with houses, boats, or harbor structures interlocking against bands of water. The Japanese title (umi = sea, mura = village) signals a generic place rather than a specific famous site, fitting the sosaku-hanga preference for personal subjects over inherited meisho-e canon. The composition likely organizes village rooftops and the shoreline into geometric blocks, each carrying its own color or tonal weight, with the sea functioning as a flat tonal field that anchors the lower portion of the design. Ono's training in the graphic, structural side of printmaking — visible in his prewar urban scenes — carries into a treatment that reads the village as architecture rather than picturesque genre. The baren-printed washi retains surface texture and ink absorption marks distinguishing the self-printed impression from polished commercial production. The subject reflects the postwar shift in Ono's practice toward Japanese landscape and rural motifs, paralleling similar moves by Onchi-circle artists who turned away from the explicitly political imagery of the 1930s.