Rain at Shin Ohashi Bridge, Tokyo — 東京新大橋雨中図

Shin Ohashi Bridge crossing the Sumida River was one of Kiyochika's signature subjects during the 1870s and 1880s, and he returned to it multiple times under varying atmospheric conditions. This rain composition in oban format depicts the iron bridge — a prominent symbol of Meiji modernization — under heavy precipitation, with the Sumida rendered in broad horizontal bands of dark water. Rain streaks drawn across the upper portion of the block disrupt the sky's luminosity, while the gaslit lamps of the bridge, if depicted, would cast haloed reflections across the wet roadway and river surface. The composition likely places the bridge at a diagonal recession into the distance, a spatial device Kiyochika borrowed from Western perspective systems. Figures with umbrellas or rickshaws may populate the bridge deck, reduced to silhouetted forms against the pale water — a characteristic approach to human presence in his weather prints.