Diary: Jan. 19th, '98, 1998

A January 1998 entry in oban format, this woodblock print records a winter day in the last years of the twentieth century. The specific date — the nineteenth of January — falls in the deepest part of winter, when daylight is short and the cold is settled. By 1998, the Diary series had been running for three decades, and Noda had developed an almost ritualistic workflow: observe, photograph, carve, print. The oban format connects his practice to the traditional Japanese print sizes used by ukiyo-e masters centuries earlier, though Noda's content — drawn from contemporary daily life — belongs entirely to the present tense.