Shower (Yūdachi), left screen

Shower (驟雨, Yūdachi), the left screen of a pair of six-panel folding screens dated 1907, is one of Konoshima Ōkoku's earliest major Bunten compositions and helped establish his reputation as a painter of dramatic atmospheric subjects. The screens depict a sudden rainstorm overtaking horsemen on a country road: a moment of weather imagery with deep roots in East Asian painting (the genre of "sudden rain" pictures has Tang and Song precedents) but treated by Ōkoku with the sharp, near-photographic observation of his Maruyama-Shijō training. The left screen handles the landscape side of the composition, with the rain rendered through diagonal lines and wash gradations across the upper register and the trees bending in the gust. The pair was exhibited at the first Bunten in 1907 and helped place Ōkoku among the Kyoto painters most quickly absorbed into the new national salon system. The brushwork is sharper and more emphatic than in his late introspective works, reflecting the painter at thirty, drawing on his training under Imao Keinen but already moving toward the distinctive narrative compositions that would mark his Bunten career.