August Morning glories

The morning glory, asagao, is among the most conventional emblems of the Japanese summer, cultivated since the Edo period and tied in classical poetry to the brevity of dawn. Sekino's August Morning Glories engages this seasonal subject within the kacho-e tradition while filtering it through sosaku-hanga sensibility: rather than the layered atmospheric refinement of Hoitsu or the decorative compression of Hiroshige's bird-and-flower prints, Sekino tends to flatten and enlarge the blossom, isolating the trumpet of the petal and the calligraphic curl of the vine against a relatively quiet ground. The carving of the keyblock favors emphatic, slightly irregular contours that retain the trace of the chisel, while overlaid colors — typically the indigos and violets associated with the flower, set against pale washi — are printed with bokashi at the petal's throat to register its tonal turn. Within his oeuvre the morning glory print stands beside other seasonal subjects as a deliberate continuation of classical Japanese motifs into a modern, individually authored print idiom.