When looking at Onosato Toshinobu’s artworks, one may well form an impression of them as ‘very Japanese’ abstracts. People may associate the central red circle of his canvas Vermillion Circle (1959, cat.no.6) with the Japanese flag, for example—and yet, according to the artist himself, his circles are not attempting to depict or symbolize anything in particular. Or else, his compositions formed of circles and rectangles may remind the viewer of Buddhist mandalas, but again, Onosato avows that his works have no connection with any kind of religious absoluteness. In other words, when we attempt to offer explanations of Onosato’s work, we first need to perform the task of clearing away of all the common interpretations that people would naturally reach for. And once we’ve cleared them away, how are we to understand the essence of his work? In this short paper, I would like to think about the unique aspects of Onosato’s work alongside its universality, referring to exhibited works as well as the artist’s own words and comparing his works to those of his contemporaries in the art scene.

Onosato Toshinobu was born in 1912, in Iida in Nagano Prefecture (the exact centerpoint if one were to join Tokyo and Kyoto with a straight line); when he was a boy, his family moved to Kiryū in Gunma, just under 100km northwest of Tokyo. Onosato moved to Tokyo in 1931 to enrol at an engineering university, but he soon dropped out in order to pursue his art, studying under Tsuda Seifū. At that time, Japan was home to a number of competing exhibitions open for public submission, organized by groups of progressive artists who wished to kick back against the conservative values of the Teiten—the national salon hosted by the Imperial Fine Arts Academy. Tsuda was a member of the Nika Association, the oldest and largest in scale of these groups. He also had affinity with Communist philosophy, and in 1933, was arrested and his painting school shut down. In 1935, changes to the Teiten system caused was a big shakeup in the art world. Against this kind of background, Onosato began to grow disillusioned with presenting work in a way that relied on submitting to preexisting art associations, and in 1935 formed a small group called the Kokushoku Yōgaten [The Black Oil Painting Exhibition], whose members hired a gallery for periodic showings of their work. His work during this period was focused on representing scenery and people in a simplified, two-dimensional style. In Japan at this time, there were many small artist groups aspiring to new forms of artistic expression, which could be broadly divided into two factions: those influenced by Surrealism, and those influenced by Geometrical Abstraction. Those with abstract leanings reformed, and in 1937 became the Jiyū Bijutsuka Kyokai [Free Art Association] of which Onosato was a member.

From the mid-thirties on, the Abstraction-Création Artists’ Association which formed in Paris in 1931 was much discussed in Japan, and the 1936 ‘Cubism and Abstract Art’ exhibition at MoMA in New York became immediate news. Based on this influx of information from overseas, Hasegawa Saburō, lead member of the Jiyū Bijutsuka Kyokai, wrote of the connection between the theory of European geometric abstraction and traditional Japanese crafts. Onosato, who was friendly with Hasegawa, continued producing work that was more and more abstract, and by the 1940s, was creating canvases formed entirely of circles and rectangles. Yet the war interrupted his artistic activity: in 1942, he was called up for military service, and was posted to China. After the war ended, he was interned in Siberia, finally returning to Japan in 1948.

Back on Japanese soil, Onosato went back to Kiryū and resumed his art practice while teaching and breeding poultry. He returned to a figurative style, once again beginning the process of simplifying the formative elements of his work. Composition (cat.no.1) and Assembly (cat.no.2) are examples from this period where the artist was finding his way. The varied colors and shapes jostling for position somehow evoke aerial photographs of villages. We could say that for Onosato’s contemporaries in the avant-garde movement, the decade after Japan’s defeat in 1945 was a time of seeking, when they relearned the surrealism and abstract art they’d been making before the war, and the same was also true of Onosato. Into the latter half of the 1950s, however, Onosato appeared to light upon his own path, which he pursued with resolution. With the ‘Exposition Internationale de l'Art Actuel’ exhibition held in November 1956 in Tokyo, many of those in Japan’s avant-garde art scene were captivated by Art Informel, and a style emphasising the materiality of the paint and the fierce movements of the painter quickly became in vogue. Yet Onosato was unmoved by this trend, working instead on honing a methodology of creating compositions consisting exclusively of circles and straight lines.

	"Composition" 1954 Oil on canvas 130.0×97.3cm Signed
	"Assembly" 1954 Oil on canvas 45.5×38.0cm Signed

Onosato’s style in the late 1950s is notable for its flat circles. This exhibition contains several works which, although diminutive in size, reflect well the artist’s development during this period. In White Large and Small Circles (1955, cat.no.3), when Onosato had just arrived at this style, we see two largish circles lined up vertically, with five smaller ones to their side, again arranged in a vertical line. At the bottom right sits a circle inside a square. The intervening space is divided up by straight lines, and because these are mostly perpendicular, the work has a strong vertical emphasis. Here, circles and lines are the only elements on the canvas, but the circles are of assorted sizes and differ in their placements, and we sense the artist is experimenting with the composition. In contrast, the 1958 watercolors Black and Gray (cat.no.4) and Two Circles (cat.no.5) are both horizontally and vertically symmetrical, featuing circles all of the same size with their intervening spaces filled by both horizontal and vertical lines. We could say that Vermillion Circle (1959, cat.no.6) from the following year represents the apotheosis of this style.

	"White large and small circles" 1955 Oil on canvas 24.5×33.5cm Signed
	"Work" (Black and Grey) 1958 Watercolor 18.8×28.2cm Signed
	"Two Circles" 1958 Watercolor 28.2×37.8cm Signed

At first glance, it may appear with these flat circle works as though the circles are, as it were, the figures, and the lines the background. This is why Vermillion Circle may appear to be representing the Japanese flag, as noted in the introduction, and why some may wish to interpret White Large and Small Circles as having garnered visual inspiration from the artist’s dealings with eggs, during his time rearing poultry. Is this really true though—is the relationship between the circles and the lines as simple as that between figure and background? Undeniably, the circles use their drastic flatness to assert their presence—and yet, the straight lines also assert their presence through their density. We could say, in fact, that they are competing with one another. Onosato himself has stated the following about his work from this period: “I put circles of the same size in vertical or horizontal rows. I fill up the whole canvas. The key is to make sure that there’s no space that is missed, that everywhere is filled up. The blank spaces and the subject are the same, everything is both blank space and subject at the same time.” He also said, “I’m breaking away more and more from what color and shape are trying to show, moving further from what expression means, and concentrating just on things ‘being there.’” (i) It is clear from this also that for Onosato, there is no distinction between figure and background, and that his circles are not symbolizing anything in particular.

Into the 1960s, a change took place to the relationship between circles and lines in Onosato’s works. No longer are the circles painted on flat—now, their insides are buried in horizontal and vertical lines, and as a result the entire canvas is composed of numerous rectangles, with large circles floating on top of them. It was these works which cemented Onosato’s artistic reputation: in 1963, he won First Prize in the Japanese Category of the 7th Japan International Art Exhibition, represented Japan in the 1964 and 1966 Venice Biennales, and participated in various overseas exhibitions such as the 1964 Guggenheim International Exhibition and the 1965 ‘The New Japanese Painting and Sculpture’ exhibition at MoMA, New York.

This exhibition does not contain many works from the 1960s, but 69-E (cat.no.7) from 1969 is a good exemplification of the characteristic features of Onosato’s work from this period. The painting is composed of tiny rectangles and several concentric circles, the individual rectangles broken up by the arcs of the circles. The juxtaposition of high-contrast color pairings like navy with yellow, and pale blue with vermillion, the viewer is confronted with a visual stimulus a bit like a halation. In fact, when the Op Art of Victor Vasarely and others was presented in ‘The Responsive Eye’ exhibition at New York MoMA in 1965 as a new movement of abstract art utilizing visual illusions, there were some who connected Onosato’s work with it. The following review is an example of this:

“Onosato’s practice can be summarized in a word as ‘Op Art’. However, although New York Op Art is now receiving much attention even in Japan, it should be said that Onosato’s brand of ‘Op Art’ has existed since before the emergence of this term, gradually changing and gaining clarity within an entirely Japanese climate. It is this logical, vivid development which we should be writing about in reference to this artist.” (ii)

As stated towards the end of this review, Onosato’s painting style was indeed developed by the artist quite independently to the similar-looking Op Art from the West.

Incidentally, another distinctive feature of 69-E that deserves mention is that the central circle contains four semi-circles, which evoke patterns using tomoe—a shape similar to a comma—found in Japanese mon (crests). In Onosato’s work from the 1970s onwards, as in TOMOE AND TWO (1973, cat.no.8), we often find this shape, which also has much in common with the yin-yang symbol from Eastern philosophy. However, it would be too hasty to leap from this fact to supposing any influence from Eastern philosophy on Onosato’s works. For him, this shape was almost certainly one that naturally asserted itself during his pursuing the relationship between circles and rectangles.

	"TOMOE and TWO" 1973 Oil on canvas 24.0×34.5cm Signed

We now return to the concerns first brought up in the introduction. Onosato’s paintings composed of circles and straight lines are not attempting to recreate or depict elements of the figurative realm like the sun or eggs, are not symbolizing anything, do not have connections to religiosity in the manner of mandalas, and have no connection with trends like Op Art. What remains when we sheaf off all the analogies suggested by the paintings’ appearances are simply the facts of these works formed of circles and straight lines. “When both composition and subject vanishes, what remains?” Onosato asks. “What is there is not the thing that has been portrayed—rather the canvas itself becomes the thing.”(iii) In other words, if Onosato’s pictures look like mandalas, then instead of concluding that Onosato sought to portray the image of a mandala, we should rather think that it is because the pictures themselves are a kind of microcosm that they appear that way. They are pictures arrived at by transcending the dimension of self-expression, that product of Western modernity, and instead giving oneself up to the system of color and shape. This is why Onosato’s pictures attain a kind of universality that transcends time and the shores of East and West.

i: Onosato Toshinobu, “‘Circles’ and ‘Eggs’—A Poultry Farmer Drawing Circles”, Geijutsu Shincho, Vol 9 Issue 7, July 1958, pp.225-226
ii: Anonymous, “Placing Circles with Impact: Onosato”, Asahi Shimbun, June 21, 1969, Evening Edition, p.7
iii: Onosato Toshinobu, “Circles”, Asahi Journal, Issue 188, October 14, 1962, no page no. 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 　　

Translated by Polly Barton