Mishima - Tokaidô

Mishima is the eleventh post-station on the Tôkaidô, situated at the eastern foot of the Hakone pass in present-day Shizuoka and historically dominated by Mishima Taisha, the regional first-rank shrine, and by sight-lines to Mount Fuji. Hiroshige's 1833–34 design is known for travellers and torii dissolving into morning mist; Sekino's revisitation, produced as part of his extended Tôkaidô project of the 1960s and 1970s, treats the station as a current scene rather than an echo of the older image. The sheet is a self-carved, self-printed mokuhanga in the sosaku-hanga manner, executed on washi with the artist controlling every stage from key-block drawing through colour registration. Compositionally Sekino's Tôkaidô prints favour broad flattened colour areas, a quiet line, and occasional bokashi gradations across sky or distant landscape, with observed contemporary detail — utility poles, signage, post-war architecture — sitting alongside any older surviving topography of the station town.