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Numbered among Kiyochika's earlier Tokyo prints, this work probably dates from the prolific period of the late 1870s when his kosen-ga series was at its peak critical reception. The composition focuses on the interplay between a man-made light source and the natural environment — a tension that gave his cityscapes their documentary and aesthetic power simultaneously. Printing was accomplished with multiple carved cherry-wood blocks, with separate blocks reserved for each tonal register of sky and for the key outlines. The resulting image achieves atmospheric continuity unusual for the woodblock medium, more closely related to Western aquatint or lithographic tones than to the flat color fields of earlier ukiyo-e.