Forty-Eight Famous Views of Tokyo: Irises at Horikiri During Rainy Season

This view of the iris gardens at Horikiri during the summer rains comes from Ikkei's 'Forty-Eight Famous Views of Tokyo' series of around 1871 and depicts one of the most beloved seasonal destinations of late Edo and early Meiji Tokyo. The Horikiri district, on the eastern outskirts of the city, was famous for its commercial iris fields, which from the late eighteenth century had drawn townspeople out for the rainy-season bloom in early summer (samidare, the 'fifth-month rains'). Ikkei renders the irises in close foreground bands of saturated indigo and violet against the gray of the rainy sky, with figures under umbrellas and straw rain capes picking their way along the muddy paths. The composition flattens the picture space in the manner characteristic of early Meiji print design, eliminating the careful atmospheric recession of Hiroshige's earlier Horikiri views in favor of a more graphic, color-block treatment. The print belongs to the Edo-Tokyo Museum's holdings of the series and represents the persistence of the inherited Edo-period seasonal calendar — irises in early summer, fireworks at midsummer, snow at New Year — within the Meiji topographic survey.