No. 2, Shower at Ryōgoku Bridge (Ryōgoku no yūdachi), from the series Comical Views of Famous Places in Edo
江戸名所道化尽 二 両国の夕立
- Date:
- 1859
- Medium:
- Color woodblock print (nishiki-e)
江戸名所道化尽 二 両国の夕立
Shower at Ryōgoku Bridge (Ryōgoku no yūdachi), number 2 in Utagawa Hirokage's Edo meisho dōke zukushi ('Comical Views of Famous Places in Edo'), is a vertical ōban color woodblock print published in 1859 by Tsujiokaya Bunsuke. The Ryōgoku Bridge was one of the most celebrated [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) sites in Edo — the great wooden span over the Sumida River where the city's summer fireworks displays were held and where pedestrians and pleasure-boats crossed in dense traffic on warm evenings — and Hirokage builds his comic premise on the kind of sudden afternoon thunderstorm (yūdachi) for which the season was famous. The composition reimagines the standard meisho-e of the bridge as a slapstick fable: a kappa (a river imp from Japanese folklore) attacks a thunder deity who has tumbled into the river, trying to seize the deity's magical ball, while the deity counterattacks with a directed gust of intestinal wind. The combination of canonical Edo site, classical thunderstorm subject, and Rabelaisian comic premise is characteristic of the series and aligns Hirokage's work with the late-Edo tradition of gigaga (戯画, 'play pictures') practiced most famously by Utagawa Kuniyoshi. The Ōta Memorial Museum of Art in Tokyo holds an impression of this sheet, which featured in the museum's 2024 Hirokage retrospective.
江戸名所道化尽 三十九 深川万年橋
1860
Color woodblock print (nishiki-e)
両国の虎 — 廣景眞景之内
8th month, 1860
Color woodblock print (nishiki-e)
不忍の池 — 江戸名所道化尽
1859
Color woodblock print (nishiki-e)
江戸名所道化尽 十七 通一丁目祇園会
1859
Color woodblock print (nishiki-e)
Woodblock print
![Mount Fuji on a Moonlit Night, Kawai Bridge (Tsukiyo no Fuji [Kawaibashi]), from the series "Selection of Views of the Tokaido (Tokaido fukei senshu)" by Kawase Hasui](https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/d0960668-1e73-339a-b182-fb995a54bff0/full/843,/0/default.jpg)
1947
Color woodblock print; oban
1926
Color woodblock print; oban
1930
Color woodblock print; oban
No. 2, Shower at Ryōgoku Bridge (Ryōgoku no yūdachi), from the series Comical Views of Famous Places in Edo (江戸名所道化尽 二 両国の夕立) was created by Utagawa Hirokage (歌川広景) in 1859.
No. 2, Shower at Ryōgoku Bridge (Ryōgoku no yūdachi), from the series Comical Views of Famous Places in Edo depicts bridges.