Nihonbashi - Tokaidô

Nihonbashi marks the symbolic and historical zero-mile point of the Tokaido, the Edo-period highway connecting Edo with Kyoto, and Sekino's treatment of this opening station belongs to his mokuhanga series reimagining the fifty-three post stations. Where Hiroshige's 1830s rendering teemed with daimyo processions and morning crowds, Sekino's sosaku-hanga approach favors flattened planes, broad color masses, and architectural emphasis over narrative detail. Working entirely by his own hand — designing, carving, and printing each block in keeping with sosaku-hanga principles — Sekino renders the bridge's structural geometry and urban surrounds with the graphic boldness that characterizes his postwar style. The Tokaido series, undertaken across roughly two decades from the 1960s onward, represents a sustained postwar engagement with a central subject of the woodblock tradition, recasting an established ukiyo-e theme through twentieth-century formal sensibilities.