A River in the Rain

This larger [chuban](/glossary/chuban)-format print, catalogued as Hasegawa number 1106, depicts a river at night during a sudden rainstorm, with two small boats faintly visible in the foreground beneath a curtain of grey rain. The image is rendered in a notably wider tonal range than the typical Night Scenes nocturne — the rain is drawn as diagonal lines across the entire surface of the print, the water is broken into reflective patches that pick up the grey of the sky, and the boats are reduced to dark silhouettes anchoring the lower edge of the composition. The atmospheric effect is closer to the work of Kobayashi Kiyochika or Takahashi Shōtei than to Shōda's more typical evening compositions, and it suggests that the Hasegawa-Nishinomiya house had a wider stylistic range in its Shōda Kōhō inventory than the Night Scenes set alone would imply. The print measures roughly 25 by 39 cm, larger than the standard chuban, and is documented through the Japanese Art Open Database research files. The composition is one of Shōda's most technically accomplished — the gradation of rain across the surface required careful registration and a series of overlay impressions — and is considered among the most desirable of his designs by modern collectors.