Work 5

The title Work 5, with its numbered designation and absence of descriptive subject, places this print squarely in the abstract vein of sosaku-hanga, where titles like Work, Composition, and Form signaled a deliberate move away from representation. Shinagawa produced numerous prints of this kind alongside his more recognizable landscape subjects, treating the woodblock as a medium for purely formal investigation. The composition likely consists of interlocking shapes, color fields, and exposed wood grain, all hand-carved and hand-printed by the artist. The matte saturation typical of baren-printed washi gives such abstract works a tactile, painterly quality distinct from mechanical reproduction. Pieces in this series connect Shinagawa to the broader international current of postwar print abstraction, while his insistence on traditional Japanese materials and the jiga, jikoku, jizuri principle kept him anchored within the sosaku-hanga lineage that began with Yamamoto Kanae and Onchi Kōshirō.