Nagoya Castle

Sekino's depiction of Nagoya Castle renders one of Japan's most celebrated Edo-period fortifications, rebuilt after wartime destruction and iconic for its gilded shachi (dolphin-like roof ornaments) atop the donjon. In keeping with his sosaku-hanga practice, Sekino likely organized the composition around the castle's tiered white plaster walls rising against sky, exploiting the woodblock medium's capacity for flat, luminous color fields. Bokashi gradations would have served to model the sweeping stone ishigaki base and the atmospheric distance between architectural planes. The subject belongs to a tradition of meisho-e — depictions of famous places — here filtered through the modernist sensibility of the creative print movement rather than the documentary conventions of shin-hanga.