May rain at the Sanno Temple - Samidare furu sanno

The Sanno Temple — more precisely, Hie Jinja (Hie Shrine) in Akasaka, Tokyo — is among the city's important Shinto sites, historically connected to the Tokugawa shogunate and associated with the Sanno Matsuri festival. Hasui's title employs the classical term samidare (fifth-month rain) rather than the colloquial equivalent, aligning the print with the long poetic tradition of early summer precipitation in Japanese literature. The composition likely shows the shrine's stone torii gate, stone lanterns, or wooded approach path under falling rain, the established architectural forms softened by moisture and dim gray light. Rain-scene prints of shrine precincts appealed to audiences nostalgic for traditional Tokyo settings being rapidly transformed by modernization. The muted palette typical of such works — grays, muted greens, dark blues — required the printing team to produce nuanced tonal transitions that avoided the muddy results that could come from overlapping multiple cool-toned pigments.