Fine Weather after Snow at Masaki

Fine Weather after Snow at Masaki, on ukiyo-e.org, is one of Utagawa Hiroshige's Edo ukiyo-e landscape prints depicting Masaki, the bend in the Sumida River near Imado and Sanya where the great loop began to swing west toward Asakusa. The composition belongs to the family of designs in which Hiroshige treats Sumida bank locations in different seasons and weather. Here the snow has fallen heavily and stopped; the sky is clear, the air sharp, and the river and embankment lie under bright winter light. Bare trees on the bank cast long shadows; a few figures, perhaps boatmen or fishermen, move along the shore; rooftops gleam beneath their loads of snow. Hiroshige uses the white of unprinted paper to carry the snow surface itself, allowing the deep blue of the river and the soft bokashi of the sky to do the work of registering the cold, clear weather. The Masaki bank had its own minor landmarks, including a small Inari shrine and the prospect across to the Mukojima embankment, but Hiroshige's interest is finally less in named monuments than in the moment after the snowstorm when the river city is at its most luminous and quiet.