A Thunder-Shower at Oumayabashi Bridge — 御厩橋雷雨

Oumayabashi (御厩橋), a bridge spanning the Sumida River connecting the Honjo and Asakusa districts, is depicted during a dramatic summer thunderstorm. The Japanese subtitle 御厩橋雷雨 confirms the subject as a rainstorm at this specific crossing. Thunderstorms over the Sumida offered Kiyochika the full range of atmospheric effects that defined his kosen-ga practice: lightning illumination, rain streaks across the composition, the wet reflective surface of the river, and figures hunched beneath umbrellas on the bridge. The sudden vertical drama of lightning against a darkened sky was a pictorial challenge that Kiyochika's Western-influenced approach to lighting was well suited to address. The Oumayabashi crossing was near his home district of Honjo, and the Sumida bridges appeared repeatedly in his Tokyo views of the late 1870s and early 1880s. The print belongs to his most accomplished period of atmospheric landscape printmaking.