Portrait of Koshiro Onchi

Kōshirō Onchi (1891–1955) was the foundational figure of the sosaku-hanga movement and a direct influence on Sekino's development as a printmaker. Portraying Onchi was an act of artistic homage as well as documentation: Sekino had personal knowledge of his subject's appearance, manner, and significance within the print world. The portrait would carry the weight of that relationship, distinguishing it from commissioned or incidental portraiture. Onchi's own portrait prints were formally experimental, and Sekino's depiction of him may reflect an awareness of that context—a printmaker portraying a printmaker in the medium they shared. The composition likely presents Onchi's face with the economy and directness that both men valued, using the woodblock's inherent qualities of line weight and ink density to convey character rather than surface likeness alone.