Rainy Moon

Medium:: Mokuhanga (Japanese woodblock)
Image courtesy of: Saru Gallery

Description

'Rainy Moon' is a sheet from Tsuki hyakushi (One Hundred Aspects of the Moon), the series of one hundred ōban-format designs Yoshitoshi produced between 1885 and 1892, generally taken to represent the close of his career and of nineteenth-century [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) more broadly. Each design pairs the moon — sometimes prominent, sometimes a tonal disc behind weather — with a literary, historical, or theatrical reference. In this case the moon is largely obscured by rain, rendered through fine [baren](/glossary/baren)-pressed lines over atmospheric [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradation on [washi](/glossary/washi). Printing across Tsuki hyakushi is unusually careful for late-Edo and Meiji output, employing mica, blind-printing ([karazuri](/glossary/karazuri)), and selective burnishing within the run. Within Yoshitoshi's wider work, the series represents the pivot away from the violent imagery of his bakumatsu and early Meiji years toward quieter emblematic compositions in which a single human figure is set within a distilled natural moment.