Maisaka - Tokaidô

Maisaka was the thirtieth post station on the Tokaido, a small port at the mouth of Lake Hamana whose travelers crossed by ferry to neighboring Arai. Sekino's print belongs to his Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido series, begun in 1960 and pursued over more than a decade as a personal reinterpretation of the route Hiroshige had treated over a century earlier. Where Hiroshige relied on figural narrative, Sekino characteristically simplifies, foregrounding a structural element of the place — likely water, rooflines, or a stretch of shore — and treating it through broad blocks of carved color and quiet bokashi transitions. The print is self-carved and self-printed in the sosaku-hanga tradition, and its compositional restraint reflects a postwar sensibility that prized the artist's hand and individual vision over the reproductive ukiyo-e production model.