Esashi Hokkaido

Esashi, on the western coast of Hokkaido, was historically one of Japan's principal herring ports, and Sekino's print engages a place tied to weathered wooden architecture, fishing infrastructure, and the cold light of the Sea of Japan. Working in the sosaku-hanga tradition, in which the artist conceives, carves, and prints each block himself, Sekino typically composes such northern subjects with broad, flat color planes and assertive black contours, often layering bokashi gradations to evoke overcast skies or damp coastal air. His Hokkaido and Tohoku scenes return repeatedly to the everyday vernacular of provincial Japan — clustered roof lines, telephone poles, snow-banked streets — observed without sentimentality. As a native of Aomori, the prefecture facing Hokkaido across the Tsugaru Strait, Sekino approached the north as familiar terrain rather than exotic subject, distinguishing his meisho-e from the more polished tourist views of his shin-hanga contemporaries and aligning the print with his lifelong project of documenting the textures of regional Japanese life.