Nakatsugawa (Rain)

Along the road in the foreground, three travelers in green rain capes and hats walk with their heads bowed. A single pine stands at left, and beyond it a rice paddy filled with rainwater, where a white heron rests its wings. At the back right the houses of the post town continue, and trees bend widely in the wind. Behind them rises a black mountain.

Fine vertical lines of rain cover the whole picture, blurring the mountains and houses. The sky and mountains are rendered in shades of ink, and only the green and red of the travelers' rain capes and the blue of the paddy stand out in the rain.

Nakatsugawa-juku was a post town in Ena District, Mino Province, the second after entering Mino from the Kiso Road. A wealthy town with many merchant houses, it bustled with markets held six times a month. A magistrate's office of the Yamamura family, senior retainers of the Owari domain, was also located there.

This is a design by Hiroshige, and the number on the vermilion seal is "forty-six." There is a fair-weather design with the same title and an entirely different composition, and it is said the rain design came out first and was later replaced by the fair-weather one. Few copies of the rain design survive, and this one is the impression held by the Tokyo National Museum. The fair-weather design is listed separately as number 46.