A harusame composition belonging to the well-established lineage of rain-and-figure prints that runs from Hiroshige through Hasui and into Shinsui's [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga). The image likely shows a woman beneath a janome paper umbrella, perhaps in geta, the rain represented by fine carved lines incised across the entire image area and printed in a single muted tone — a technical feat requiring exact registration to keep the diagonal strokes consistent across multiple color blocks. The atmosphere depends on [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations in the ground and sky to suggest damp light without illustrating it literally. Shinsui's rain prints adapt the [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) weather conventions to bijin-ga, foregrounding the figure rather than the locale. The work sits within Watanabe Shozaburo's broader [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) catalogue, where seasonal weather subjects were issued in parallel with landscape prints by Hasui and Yoshida and helped establish the movement's identity in interwar Western collections.
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Spring rain was created by Ito Shinsui (伊東深水).
Spring rain depicts spring and rain.
