A trait of the Japanese Arts and Letters is rain as a subject of imagery and poetry. As explained in advance, the particular sensitivity of the Japanese spirit for the season changing is expressed through identifying marks such as the variety of flowerings. Those marks are also largely represented by rain and snow. As regards poetry, a recurring leitmotif in the haiku is, in fact, the kigo, which is nothing but an expressed or implicit reference to the season that is already under way. Within that genuine poetics involving nature and seasons, a special attention is paid to rain, with the relevant varying aspects and displays. Owing to climatic reasons, rain is in Japan not only evocative of autumn, but also of that rainy period, symbolized by the hydrangea, beginning on June and ending on early July. In fact, that flower blooms right about that time, and this comes in such a rampantly fashion that a large amount of hanami are inspired. Also the spring rain, in that it is crucial for the rice growth and, in turn, for nutrition, deserves to be taken into due account because it is really seen as a blessing in the Japanese rural culture.
Rain almost disappears in the west art because of the lack of comparable sensitivity to everything that stands for season and, therefore, it was believed that its representation could rather be a distraction from or some way to overshadow the main subject. On the contrary, rain so gains in the Japanese art relevance per se, that it rather provides an enhancing, than hiding, effect on the scenery, precisely because it is immersed in its own seasonal and climatic features. From the Japanese standpoint, in fact, an environment deprived of atmospheric changes would be quite unnatural.
In Hiroshige’s artwork, to represent rain obliquely falling from dark clouds, use is made of the bokashi technique, which is to create shades of color with three-dimensional rendering, as in painting. Note that so remarkable were the repositories of expertise needed to engrave straightlines in close proximity each other, that the rain reproduction through the ukiyo-e had lyrical significance, but it also turned out to be a hard skill test.
The angle is asymmetric: the bridge is captured sideways, not head-on, and also the horizon line, which coincides with the opposite riverbank, is oblique. The described space representation can be referred to that typically mismatching Japanese aesthetic quality described in The book of tea by the art critic Okakura Kakuzō. According to this author, the symmetrical form is fulfilled in itself and, as such, it necessitates no effort of imagination, while the form affected by asymmetry, imperfection, incompleteness is bound to encourage the human mind to set in motion an imaginative dynamic process that stops when the perfect form is at long last created.
It is also worth noticing that the people who are walking down the bridge with hurried step to seek shelter, along with the boat moving fast against the foreground, give the overall image the idea of movement.
Maybe it’s because the special angle looks great, or the way the rainfall is expressed, the fact remains that the artwork at hand did impress and influence Van Gogh who felt driven to make a close replica. From that time on, rainfall was more often represented in western paintings.
Torii Kiyomitsu’s (1735–1785) artwork is inspired by the legend of the ninth-century beautiful poetess named Ono no Komachi. Accordingly, she wrote a poetry, in begging for rain, on a card and placed it within a tiny boat which was then left in the water of a pool placed in the interior of the imperial garden. The poetically devised divine help suddenly happened to be fruitful and poured the long-awaited rain for three days. As regards the traditional Japanese society, that legend makes any sense of both the importance of rain and its poetic conception.
The refined composition, centered around the representation of a pair of subjects, is consistent with the Japanese in yo aesthetic guidelines based on the antagonism between opposites. This principle originates from that bipolar Chinese philosophy according to which reality is nothing less than a perpetual conflict between darkness and enlightenment, negative and positive, passive and active, female and male. In the artwork under examination, the above contrast is discernible through the poetess-attendant dialectic relationship: the former wears sandals, has got the obi belt knotted up in the front, also wears a long-sleeved kimono, bends her head on the little boat while is driving it; the latter instead, in the same order, is barefoot, got the obi to the rear, wears a short-sleeved kimono, is upwardly looking at the umbrella and rain.
The artwork by Tsuchiya Koitsu (1870-1949) represents rain in daylight, therefore at a particular time of light. Koitsu is an artist especially devoted to create refined dark-and-light effects on landscapes. Note, in the work here selected, the lyric touch he adopts in visually describing sunlight passing through the translucent curtain made from meteoric water.
Terauchi Fukutaro’s (1891-?) painture portrays the rain at night, so at a different time of day, with other light effects consisting of the reflection of the bright windows and of the street lanterns on a wet ground. The willow fronds tend to bend under a slanting heavy rain while the whole scene is shrouded in a somewhere sparkling thick fog.
Finally, in Takeji Asano’s (1900-1999) woodblock print, the stately silhouette of the Buddhist pagoda acts as a counterpoint to the solitary figure portrayed from behind. The work conveys the idea of the sacredness of rain: we can even imagine its noise in the solemn silence of the temple courtyard.
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The pictures are from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_Shower_over_Shin-%C5%8Chashi_bridge_and_Atake
http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/51090
http://www.ohmigallery.com/DB/ItemDetail.asp?item=12387