Mariko

Mariko, the twentieth post-station on the Tôkaidô, lies west of the old castle town of Sumpu in present-day Suruga ward, Shizuoka, and was historically known for tororo-jiru, a grated-yam soup served at roadside teahouses along this stretch of the highway. Hiroshige's 1833–34 design centred on one such teahouse with travellers being served. Sekino's contemporary Mariko, part of his Fifty-three Stations of the Tôkaidô pursued through the 1960s and 1970s, records the station as it survived in the post-war landscape rather than reproducing the older image. The sheet is a self-designed, self-carved, and self-printed mokuhanga produced on washi in keeping with sosaku-hanga method, where the artist controls drawing, block-cutting, and impression. Compositionally the print follows the wider Tôkaidô series in its preference for flat colour planes, a restrained key line, and selective bokashi gradations, with modern detail acknowledged rather than edited out.