Institut für Kunstgeschichte Ostasiens Seeing in a Time of War: Disoriented Vision in Onchi Kōshirō’s Insects, Fish, and Shells (1943)

What does it mean to see when the world has become difficult to comprehend? This talk examines Insects, Fish, and Shells (1943), a book designed and written by Onchi Kōshirō (1891–1955), a pioneering abstract artist and leading figure of Japan’s Creative Print Movement (sōsaku hanga). Produced during a period of intensifying censorship, material scarcity, and uncertainty about the course of the war, this book brings together prints, photographs, poetic texts, and close observation of insects and marine life. I argue that this book is fundamentally concerned with perceptual disorientation. Eyes are obstructed, bodies fragmented, movement misdirected, and apparently protective forms reveal unexpected vulnerability. A moth follows light toward destruction; a grasshopper continues to move as its season approaches its end; an armored beetle exposes the fragility of the body within. Across the book, living creatures struggle to perceive, move through, and adapt to environments they cannot fully control. By turning to the worlds of insects, fish, and shells, Onchi created a visual language to interrogate the limits of perception. Rather than offer explicit anti-war messages, Insects, Fish, and Shells highlights perceptual instability in wartime Japan. It asks what forms of knowledge remain possible when familiar ways of reading the world no longer seem reliable.