Futagawa

A second composition depicting Futagawa, the thirty-third Tokaido station near present-day Toyohashi in Aichi Prefecture. The existence of multiple Sekino prints titled Futagawa reflects the working method of his Tokaido series of 1960 to 1974, in which he sometimes returned to a station with a different vantage or trial state, or issued variant impressions exploring alternative color keys. Where Hiroshige's classic Futagawa centered on the Kashiwaya teahouse at Sarugababa, Sekino's interpretations typically narrow the field to a single architectural or topographic motif, an eaves line, a wall, a stretch of paved road, rendered in the broad flatly inked planes that distinguish his postwar manner from Edo-period mokuhanga. As a sosaku-hanga artist he executed design, carving, and printing himself, treating each impression as an autographic work rather than a reproduction. The Tokaido cycle represents one of the most sustained extended projects in twentieth-century Japanese printmaking.