ALLEN MEMORIAL ART MUSEUM 45 Nishimura Shigenaga 西村重長 (Japanese, ca. 1697–1756) Night Rain at Karasaki, no. 4 froman untitled series of Eight Views of Ōmi, 1720s Woodblock print (tan-e); ink on paper with hand coloring MaryA. AinsworthBequest, 1950.163 The theme Night Rain at Karasaki from the Eight Views of Ōmi, introduced below, often features the famous pine tree at Karasaki Shrine, on the western shore of Lake Biwa. In this print, we see the pine, stretching above the shrine’s torii gate and the small shrine building. The Karasaki pine was renowned for its enormous size and distinctive spreading branches. Here, the sharp diagonal lines indicate rainfall. A fisherman struggles with his boat to the right of the pine, while two other fishermen run to escape the rain, below. All three wear reed raincoats, or mino 蓑, introduced earlier. This is a rare early print, made before the technology of fullcolor printing was developed. The color here was added by hand. High-angle and distant perspectives of place, along with the modest size of human figures on a vast lake or mountainside, inspire a sense of awe and humility.
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