Mimasaka Province: Yamabushi Valley

On the road in the foreground, a person in a straw raincoat and another whose hat has been blown off make their way bent forward. The hat dances in the air, and the trees by the roadside bend sharply. In the middle a blue river flows across the picture, spanned by a thin bridge. At back right a reddish-brown cliff looms, with pines above it also blurred by rain.

Wide white lines and thin lines are printed diagonally over each other across the whole picture, expressing the strength of rain and wind driving sideways. The upper part of the sky is deep ink-black, so that the white of the rain stands out strongly. It is a print of great movement in which the weather, rather than the scenery, is the star.

The location of Yamabushi Valley is not certain, but locally it is said to be around Kurigo in Misaki, Okayama Prefecture, and to depict either Ododo-shita on the Yoshii River or a sheer cliff called Bozudani. The Yoshii River was an important waterway in Mimasaka on which takasebune boats plied in the Edo period.

This print is placed after Harima in the series. Impressions with the same composition are held by the Tokyo National Museum and the National Diet Library. The series' Hoki print also depicts rice planting in the rain, and the expression of weather is one of the highlights of this series.