View of an Afternoon Downpour at Mount Tenpo in Osaka (Osaka Tenpozan yudachi no kei), from the series "Famous Places in Osaka: Fine Views of Mount Tenpo (Naniwa meisho Tenpozan shokei ichiran)"

View of an Afternoon Downpour at Mount Tenpo in Osaka (Osaka Tenpozan yudachi no kei), a 1829 print from Yashima Gakutei's series Famous Places in Osaka: Fine Views of Mount Tenpo (Naniwa meisho Tenpozan shokei ichiran), is in the Art Institute of Chicago. By the late 1820s Gakutei had moved fluently between Edo [surimono](/glossary/surimono) circles and Osaka projects, and this series, devoted to the newly created Mount Tenpo at the mouth of the Aji River, is one of the most ambitious [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) of the late Bunsei era. Mount Tenpo was an artificial hill raised in 1831 from spoil dredged during channel works, but the place name and the surrounding river views had already entered the print imagination, and Gakutei's series treated them as a complete visual programme. In this sheet a sudden afternoon downpour (yudachi) sweeps the river and shoreline, scattering boatmen and travelers in the foreground while Mount Tenpo and the city beyond recede into a wet gray atmosphere. Working within the Hokusai school tradition under Katsushika Hokusai, Yashima Gakutei deploys the school's interest in dramatic weather effects and panoramic landscape, but he reserves the deluxe surimono techniques - [karazuri](/glossary/karazuri) embossing, burnished metallic accents on water and clouds, and finely tuned mineral pigments - for a project whose ambition outstripped commercial meisho prints. As a Yashima Gakutei landscape in the Hokusai school manner, this Naniwa view is one of his great late achievements.