Gassan Yudonisan

The title is a variant transliteration of Gassan Yudonosan, naming Mount Gassan and Mount Yudono of the Dewa Sanzan in Yamagata Prefecture. Together with Mount Haguro, these peaks form the most important pilgrimage destination of the Shugendo mountain-ascetic tradition in northern Honshu. Sekino's depiction belongs to his body of landscape prints devoted to the topography and sacred geography of Tohoku, the region in which he was raised. Compositionally, his mature landscapes characteristically reduce a mountain range to a sequence of overlapping planes carved with deliberate broadness, exploiting the distinctive grain of the cherrywood block. Bokashi gradations applied with the baren typically suggest atmospheric haze or seasonal mist drifting across the slopes, while the foreground may carry small architectural or vegetal markers locating the viewer at a pilgrim's vantage point. As a sosaku-hanga artist Sekino executed the carving and printing himself, and the controlled variation between impressions formed part of the medium's expressive vocabulary.