young boy (artist’s son) and his dog

This intimate double portrait depicts Sekino's son alongside his dog, placing the print among a group of personal works in which Sekino turned his printmaking practice toward his immediate family and domestic life. The sosaku-hanga movement's embrace of the artist's personal world as legitimate subject matter—inherited partly from European printmaking and partly from the modern bungeishugi tradition in Japanese literature—gave Sekino sanction to treat such private subjects with full formal ambition. The boy and dog are likely depicted in a moment of companionship or play, their informal interaction providing the compositional center of gravity. Sekino's portraiture of children brought the same psychological attentiveness he gave adult subjects: individualized features, specific posture, implied character, rather than a generic child type. The dog's form would be rendered with the same observational care visible in his dedicated animal prints.