Futagawa - Tokaidô

Explicitly identified by series in its title, this print of Futagawa belongs to Sekino's Tokaido cycle, a fifty-five-sheet sequence covering the historical post stations between Edo and Kyoto, executed in oban format between 1960 and 1974. Futagawa was the thirty-third station, situated in present-day Toyohashi, Aichi Prefecture, and known historically for Sarugababa and the Kashiwaya teahouse documented by Hiroshige a century and a quarter earlier. Sekino's treatment repositions the station in the postwar landscape, often through quiet observational fragments, a fence line, a tiled roof, a length of empty road, rather than the figural incident typical of Edo-period meisho-e. Working in the sosaku-hanga tradition, he carried out the drawing, block-cutting, and printing himself, using the wide planes of the oban sheet to develop a compositional vocabulary of decisive silhouette, restrained color, and selective bokashi. The series as a whole stands as a sustained meditation on continuity and rupture along the old highway.