Cherry Blossoms in the Rain

Cherry Blossoms in the Rain is a surimono print by Ryuryukyo Shinsai in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, dated to around 1800. The composition shows cherry blossoms wet with rainfall, a quintessential late-spring motif in classical Japanese poetry that links the fragility of the blooms to the brevity of pleasure. Working as a designer within the Hokusai school after his earlier training with Tawaraya Sori, Shinsai handled such subjects with the calligraphic spareness that the surimono format encouraged, where small sheets of luxury paper were intended for close inspection by the members of a kyoka poetry club. The rain is suggested by carefully spaced diagonal strokes or by the limp posture of the heavy blossoms, the kind of restraint that distinguishes surimono from the bolder weather effects of commercial landscape prints. Surimono printers used blind embossing and tonal grading to give the petals a soft, palpable surface against the cream ground, and the limited palette concentrates attention on the meeting of blossom, branch, and weather. The accompanying kyoka verses, originally printed on the sheet or its companions, would have responded to themes of regret, parting, and the recognition that beauty endures the assault of weather only briefly. As one of the more pictorial of Shinsai's compositions, the print shows the Hokusai school's interest in capturing meteorological mood without abandoning poetic understatement.