Bird

Single-bird compositions were a recurring motif in Sekino's kacho-e work, approached not with the decorative elegance of Edo-period bird-and-flower prints but with a directness shaped by sosaku-hanga priorities. The bird is likely rendered in silhouette or near-silhouette against a flat ground, with carving marks visible in the plumage to give the form textural life without naturalistic shading. Sekino's bird prints often forgo botanical context, placing the subject in open compositional space that heightens the graphic weight of the animal form. The washi paper absorbs the ink to soften the edges of the color fields slightly, preventing the composition from reading as purely diagrammatic. The print reflects his broader interest in animals as subjects of formal rather than sentimental attention.