Rainy Season at Ryoshimachi, Shinagawa

Among the multiple impressions of this Shinagawa subject, variations in the sky's bokashi gradation are among the most diagnostically useful features for sequencing states. This impression presents the characteristic grey-to-white tonal shift of a rainy-season overcast rendered in the upper portion of the oban sheet, above the horizontal line of rooftops and moored fishing vessels. The foreground water is handled with restrained flat color, its surface broken only by the vertical reflections of the structures behind it. Hasui's shin-hanga practice involved close collaboration with skilled woodblock carvers and printers at the Watanabe studio, and the nuanced atmospheric effects in prints like this one — particularly the soft, non-granular sky gradations — reflect the technical precision of that workshop tradition.