Jun'ichiro Sekino

Jun'ichiro Sekino (1914–1988) was one of the most influential Japanese woodblock print artists of the twentieth century, a leading figure in the sosaku-hanga ("creative prints") movement known for his mastery of color, his bold compositions, and his remarkable range of subjects spanning portraits, landscapes, theater, and folk culture.

Born in 1914 in the Yasukata district of Aomori City, Aomori Prefecture, in northern Honshu, Sekino was the son of a merchant dealing in agricultural products. He grew up in the same city as Shiko Munakata, who would later become internationally famous as a printmaker, and their shared artistic milieu fueled Sekino's early interest in art. While still in elementary school, he began exploring printmaking, and during middle school he started a magazine called Ryokuju-mu ("Dream of Green Foliage") devoted to poetry and prints.

Sekino's formal training began in 1931, when he studied intaglio printmaking and lithography under Kon Junzo. He also trained at the Etching Institute under Nishida Takeo, learning etching and oil painting. His early dedication bore fruit when, in 1936, he submitted an etching of Aomori harbor to the government-sponsored Bunten exhibition and won a first prize. He became a member of the Nihon Hanga Kyokai (Japan Print Association) in 1938. The following year, in 1939, he made a pivotal move to Tokyo and became a pupil of Koshiro Onchi, the founder and spiritual leader of the sosaku-hanga movement. He joined Onchi's weekly Ichimoku-kai (First Thursday Society) gatherings, where he deepened his knowledge of Japanese woodblock printing techniques alongside Western etching and painting methods.

Sekino drew inspiration from a wide range of artistic traditions. He admired the Edo-period masters Sharaku and Hiroshige as well as Western printmakers including Toulouse-Lautrec, Rembrandt, and Albrecht Durer. This eclecticism informed his lifelong approach to printmaking, in which he blended Eastern and Western sensibilities to create work that was unmistakably personal yet rooted in a deep understanding of both traditions.

The Second World War interrupted Sekino's artistic development. During the war years, he worked in an ammunition factory and printmaking was effectively halted. In the immediate postwar period, he supported himself by creating book illustrations and participating in collaborative woodblock print sets depicting vanishing Japanese customs and landscapes, works that carried a nostalgic resonance in a rapidly changing nation.

By the early 1950s, Sekino had established himself as one of Japan's foremost printmakers. He held his first solo exhibition in 1953 and began exhibiting internationally in 1955, winning major awards at print competitions in Tokyo, Ljubljana, and the United States. In 1958, the Rockefeller Foundation and the American Japan Society invited him to the United States, where he traveled to New York and taught at the Pratt Graphic Art Center as their first visiting professor. This international engagement continued throughout the 1960s: in 1963 he taught printmaking at Oregon State University and the University of Washington at the invitation of Gordon Gilkey, and in 1965 he began teaching at Kobe University in Japan.