Benkeibashi

The first or primary version of Sekino's Benkeibashi subject depicts the historic stone bridge over the Sosei River in Sapporo, which Sekino would have known from his time working in Hokkaido. The bridge's symmetrical arches offer a strong structural element, likely rendered with clean key-block lines against a sky treated with flat or gently graduated color. Reflections in the river below would have allowed Sekino to use the water surface as a secondary compositional field, doubling the bridge's geometry in a slightly abstracted mirror. The Benkeibashi series as a whole demonstrates his interest in urban and semi-industrial subjects alongside rural and folk themes, a range of subject matter that distinguished him from the more conventionally pastoral sosaku-hanga mainstream.