Kuwana - Tokaidô

Kuwana was the forty-second post station of the Tokaido, a castle town and harbor in Ise province where travelers arriving by ferry from Miya disembarked beside the prominent torii of Shichiri-no-watashi. Sekino's Kuwana, part of his Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido begun in 1960, departs from Hiroshige's earlier image of the same station while retaining an awareness of the historical model. The composition is likely organized around water, stone embankment, or architectural silhouette rather than narrative incident, a structural austerity that recurs throughout Sekino's stations. Carved and printed by the artist in the sosaku-hanga manner, the impression draws on layered color blocks and bokashi to evoke atmosphere and time of day. The Tokaido cycle is a major project of Sekino's career, recasting one of ukiyo-e's heavily reproduced subjects in a postwar idiom of reduced form and personal authorship.