Hakone

A second impression of Hakone reflects Sekino's habit of revisiting key Tokaido stations through multiple states, color experiments, and editions. The volcanic terrain around the Hakone checkpoint offered a fixed armature of ridge, lake, and forest that the artist could re-orchestrate by altering hue and tonal weight. In this variant the relative warmth or coolness of the mountain plane may shift, or a secondary color block may be omitted to thin the palette and increase graphic clarity. Sekino's process drew on the traditional Japanese division of labor between drawer, carver, and printer only insofar as he absorbed all three roles himself — a defining principle of the sosaku-hanga movement that emerged in the early twentieth century around Yamamoto Kanae and Onchi Koshiro. The matte washi surface, slight registration shifts between blocks, and visible baren burnishing all read as authorial marks rather than imperfections, evidence of the artist's direct engagement with material.