Horse mountain (Hokkaido)

This print draws on Sekino's recurring interest in Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost main island, where indigenous Dosanko horses graze on the volcanic upland pasture. The composition likely sets one or more animals against a broadly massed mountain silhouette, a treatment consistent with Sekino's preference for flattened spatial planes and unmodulated areas of color enlivened by [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradation. Working within the [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) jiga-jikoku-jizuri principle, he carved and printed each block himself on [washi](/glossary/washi), producing the slightly granular surface that distinguishes hand-pulled mokuhanga from commercial reproduction. Hokkaido subjects appear throughout his mature output alongside Tohoku landscapes and Tokaido road imagery, reflecting an interest in regions outside the conventional [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) canon and an attempt to extend the [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) tradition into the twentieth-century geography of northern Japan.