After the rain

The title indicates a meditative subject — the quiet that follows precipitation rather than rainfall itself. Hagiwara's treatment of such a theme would emphasize residual moisture and reflected light through layered translucent inkings on absorbent [washi](/glossary/washi). The technique of building up an image through twenty or more separately carved blocks allowed Hagiwara to register subtle shifts in tone that approximate optical effects of dampness and renewed clarity in the air. Where traditional [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) used fine line carving (kebori) to indicate rain itself, Hagiwara worked through color mass and surface modulation rather than incised line. The print belongs to his broader practice of finding correspondences between Japanese seasonal sensibility and the visual vocabulary of postwar abstraction — neither fully figurative nor fully non-objective, and grounded in the material specifics of the woodblock medium.