Sekino Juni'chirō is one of the major post-WWII figures in the sosaku hanga (creative print) movement.  He was born in Yasukata-cho, Amori Prefecture in northern Japan in 1914, the first son of Junzō Sekino who owned a wholesale fertilizer store.  From an early age Sekino displayed an artistic bent and a fascination with Japanese woodblock.  While still in middle school, he and a friend started a poetry and print magazine called Ryokuju-mu (Dream of Green Foliage) and at the age of eighteen he created a folio of prints depicting insects.  He lived close to the great print artist Munakata Shiko (1903-1975), to whom he often turned for advice.

While largely a self-taught artist, having closely studied available material on woodblock carving and printing while still young, he did study etching at Nishida Takeo’s Japanese Etching Institute and oil painting and drawing at a private painting school.  In addition, starting in 1931, he studied intaglio printmaking and lithography with printmaker Kon Junzō (1893-1944), who considered Sekino "an artistic genius."¹

In 1935 the artist Okada Saburosuke (1869-1939) and the etcher Nishida Takeo praised Sekino’s etchings during a visit to Aomori and suggested that he enter the government sponsored Teiten exhibition.  Sekino submitted an etching of Aomori harbor and won a first prize.  In October 1935 he also won a prize for a woodblock at the fourth exhibition of Nihon Hanga Kyokai (Japanese Print Association).  In 1938 he became a member of Nihon Hanga Kyokai (Japan Print Association) and in 1940, after moving to Tokyo, of Kokugakai (National Picture Association).

According to Merritt, Sekino “dreamt constantly of moving to Tokyo,” but his obligations to his family and the family’s fertilizer business kept him in Aomori until after the death of his mother and the failure of the business.¹   After moving to Tokyo, in April 1939, he worked for the publisher Shimo Taro who introduced him to Onchi Koshiro (1891-1955).  He became one of the original members of Onchi’s Ichimokukai (First Thursday Society), contributing to all of the group’s Ichimokushu print portfolios, and was considered Onchi’s right-hand man.

During the war, Sekino worked for the welfare department of the Iwasaki Communications Company procuring lodging and theater facilities for various entertainment troupes that came to his town to entertain the armament workers.   This brought him in contact with the famous kabuki actor Nakamura Kichiemon (1886-1954), whose portrait in woodblock he was to create in 1947.  This portrait of Kichiemon, heavily influenced by Onchi’s 1943 seminal work, Portrait of Hagiwara Sakutaro, is one of Sekino's most famous works, and along with portraits of the artists Munakata Shiko and Onchi Koshiro, established Sekino’s position as the leading woodblock portraitist.