Famous Views and Beautiful Women: The Iris at Sekiguchi

Sekiguchi's iris garden, located in the hilly terrain northwest of central Edo near present-day Bunkyo ward, was a recognized seasonal destination for hanami-style flower viewing in early summer. This print from Gekko's meisho-bijin-ga series places a woman among the massed iris plantings that made Sekiguchi a lesser-known counterpart to Horikiri. The iris — hanashobu or kakitsubata depending on the variety — offered Meiji-era woodblock printers an opportunity for dense pigment application, with the deep purples and violets requiring multiple key-block passes to achieve saturation. Gekko would have composed the figure against bands of blooms, possibly using partial bokashi to grade the sky from pale blue to white. The series as a whole demonstrates his facility with seasonal flower subjects integrated into recognizable Tokyo geography, a format with roots in the meisho-e tradition but updated for Meiji audiences familiar with these locations.