Minakuchi - Tokaidô

Minakuchi is the fiftieth post-station on the Tôkaidô, in the present-day city of Kôka in southern Shiga, historically known for the production of dried gourd shavings (kanpyô) and as a stop between Tsuchiyama and Ishibe along the route descending from the Suzuka pass toward Ômi. Hiroshige's design for the station depicted figures preparing kanpyô outside a roadside dwelling. Sekino's contemporary Minakuchi belongs to his Fifty-three Stations of the Tôkaidô, the long landscape project pursued from 1960 onward and a counterpart to his portrait suites within the sosaku-hanga movement. As a self-carved and self-printed mokuhanga, the sheet was designed, cut, and pulled by the artist on washi, in keeping with the creative-print insistence that the printmaker control every step. The Tôkaidô prints generally show Sekino's preference for flattened planes of colour, restrained linework, and selective bokashi for sky, water, or recession, with observed modern detail incorporated rather than excluded.