Tugboat

This print depicts a working tugboat at sea or in harbor, reflecting Sekino's upbringing near Aomori's port and the sosaku-hanga movement's willingness to treat modern industrial subjects with the same seriousness as traditional ones. The tug's compact, low-slung hull offers strong graphic possibilities as a silhouette read against graduated water tones. Sekino likely rendered the sea surface with carefully registered bokashi gradations shifting from dark foreground to paler horizon, while the vessel's mechanical details—stack, wheelhouse, towing bitt—were carved with precise gouge work into honoki or shina plywood. Rope lines and the turbulence of wake water would provide the linear energy characteristic of his landscape prints. The maritime subject had deep roots in Japanese printmaking through coastal meisho-e, but Sekino approached it without nostalgia, treating the working vessel as a legitimate subject for attentive sosaku-hanga craft.