Minakuchi - Tokaidô

A second sheet of Minakuchi from Sekino's Tôkaidô, the fiftieth station of the old Edo-to-Kyoto highway in present-day Kôka, Shiga. The duplication of station titles within the project is consistent with Sekino's working practice: across the long arc of the series he sometimes returned to a station with a different vantage, season, or compositional structure rather than treating each name as a single fixed view. Minakuchi was historically associated with kanpyô production and lay along the descent from the Suzuka range toward Lake Biwa. As a sosaku-hanga mokuhanga, the print was designed, carved, and printed by Sekino himself on washi, without recourse to the publisher–carver–printer division of older ukiyo-e workshops. The composition follows the formal habits of the wider Tôkaidô set: flat colour blocks, sparing line, occasional bokashi for atmospheric recession, and a willingness to let modern intrusions — utility poles, paved surfaces, contemporary signage — register alongside any surviving older fabric of the post-station town.