Hara - Tokaidô

Hara was the thirteenth post station on the Tôkaidô, situated on the coastal plain south of Mount Fuji, and Hiroshige's celebrated 1830s view from this station made the silhouette of Fuji virtually synonymous with Hara in the popular imagination. Sekino's own Hara entry in his long Tôkaidô series engages this iconographic weight selectively: he is far less likely to deliver a postcard-style Fuji and more likely to anchor the image on a low building, a section of plastered wall, or a stretch of pine-lined road, leaving any reference to the mountain glimpsed or implied. The mokuhanga is printed in his characteristic mature manner, with carefully judged bokashi gradations carrying the eye across sky or ground, and several flat color blocks layered on absorbent washi. As a sôsaku-hanga artist, Sekino designed, carved, and printed the work himself, and the visible woodgrain in broad areas is part of the image's intentional record of its own making.