Presenter: Alivia Stiles – Business Administration
Faculty Mentor(s): Cecilia Rosenow, Alexandria Nanneman
Session: (Virtual) Oral Panel—Read, Speak and Act
Kōshirō Onchi is the father of Sōsaku-hanga, a form of Japanese print popularized in the 20th century during the Shōwa Era of Japan. Sōsaku-hanga, often considered an evolution of the print form Shin-hanga, became a global fine art phenomenon and its development as a result of increased Westernization has been explored by many scholars. This essay contributes to this conversation by additionally lacing the Western influence, particularly among cultural driving events of the 20th century like World War II and the Great Depression, with Eastern tradition and response to these circumstances. This combination provides us with a crucial insight: how these global players affected Kōshirō Onchi’s personal life and identity, thus affecting the art form of Sōsaku-hanga. This delineation is done through the examination of Onchi’s print Family of the Field from Poem no. 2, using a visual analysis to further understand historical and contextual elements presented by previous research in the field. What is indicated by this comprehensive analysis is that there is a certain balance to the contextual and historical influence on Sōsaku-hanga which occurs not only in a culmination of Eastern and Western culture, as well as global events, but also the personal impact of these elements on a single artist, which manifest clearly in the work if one knows where to look. This insight provokes us to think more broadly about what might have influenced visual aspects of a certain artistic piece.