Benkei Bridge

This second treatment of Benkei-bashi indicates Sekino approached the Akasaka-area moat bridge more than once, a working method consistent with his practice of revisiting Tokyo landmarks across years and editions. A second version typically differs from the first in viewpoint, season, time of day, or chromatic key — for example, exchanging a daylight rendering for an evening or snow-covered state, or shifting from a frontal arch view to an oblique one that emphasizes the perspectival recession of the balustrade. Because sosaku-hanga artists carved their own blocks, alternative versions usually involve entirely new keyblocks rather than recolored impressions of the same matrix, allowing Sekino to recompose line as well as color. The Benkei Bridge motif fits within his broader corpus of bridge subjects — including views of Edo, Kyoto, and provincial sites — where the bridge functions both as architectural structure and as a metaphor for transit through Japan's urban and historical landscape, themes central to his postwar reimagining of the meisho-e tradition.