Night Rain at the Paulownia Grove at Akasaka

Fine lines of rain are drawn across the entire picture, and in the distance a forested hill is blurred in the rain. In the middle ground the surface of Tameike appears, and young paulownia trees line the bank in the foreground. At lower right the roof of a building can be seen, and at lower left people in umbrellas and straw capes walk through the rain.

In a dark palette of ink shades and green, it expresses the atmosphere of a rain-misted dusk. Layering the shadows of the forest with black gradation and covering the whole picture with lines of rain conveys the heaviness of damp air.

Akasaka Tameike was a reservoir that formed part of Edo Castle's outer moat, and paulownia trees were planted on its bank, giving the place the name Paulownia Grove. The pond's water fell into the moat outside Toranomon. Some see the hill in the back as the forest of Sanno Shrine (today's Hie Shrine).

The print bears the inscription "drawn by Hiroshige II" and was published in April 1859 (Ansei 6), after the first Hiroshige's death. It is not listed in the series' table of contents and is also thought to be a replacement for the summer print "The Paulownia Grove at Akasaka," but many museums hold it as part of the set. Compared with the first Hiroshige's masterpieces of rain, its darker and heavier rendering of rain is said to show the second Hiroshige's individuality.