September Early frost

An autumn landscape responding to hatsushimo, the first frost that traditionally arrives in northern Honshu and Hokkaido by early September. The subject sits within Japan's long meisho-e and seasonal-landscape tradition, which Sekino—born and raised in Aomori in the cold northern reaches of Honshu—knew intimately. Early-frost compositions typically lean on cool palettes of pale blue, grey, and white, with bokashi gradations used to render mist clinging to grasses, fields, or lower mountainsides. As a sosaku-hanga printmaker, Sekino designed, carved, and pulled the impressions himself, allowing him to control the subtle tonal transitions central to atmospheric subjects of this kind. The print connects to a wider body of seasonal landscape work in his career, parallel in spirit to the snow and winter prints he produced of his native Tohoku region, in which weather and light, rather than a named place, structure the image.