Winter in Yamazato — Fuyu no Yamazato

Yamazato (山里) translates as mountain village, an evocative term in classical Japanese poetry (waka) describing remote rural settlements at elevation. The fuyu no yamazato—winter mountain village—is a canonical subject in Japanese visual and literary culture, appearing in seasonal verse collections and painting long before printmaking. Sekino's approach brings sosaku-hanga's directness to this traditional subject: unprinted washi stands for snow blanketing rooftops and ground, while graduated blue-gray tones describe sky and the deep shadows of snow accumulation under eaves. Traditional wooden farmhouses, a shrine building, or a stone wall disappearing under drifts likely anchor the composition. The cold stillness of a remote village in winter—the quality that waka poets called fuyu no sabishisa (winter loneliness)—would be conveyed not through sentiment but through restrained palette and the weight of white space.