No. 20: Rain on the Hiratsuka Plain near Kutsukake Station - Keisai Eisen

A woodblock print by Keisai Eisen depicting travellers and pack horses caught in a rainstorm on the Kisokaido route.

This woodblock print by Keisai Eisen belongs to the series 'The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kisokaido', a collaborative project between Eisen and Utagawa Hiroshige. The series documents the journey along the Kisokaido, an inland route connecting Edo to Kyoto. Eisen contributed twenty-four of the seventy-one prints in the collection, often focusing on the atmospheric conditions of the rural route.

The composition depicts a group of travellers and pack horses navigating a sudden downpour on the Hiratsuka Plain. Eisen employs diagonal lines across the upper portion of the image to represent the driving rain, a technique that creates a sense of movement and urgency. The figures are hunched against the weather, their garments and straw hats rendered with simple, effective lines. The horses, laden with blue-covered cargo, trudge forward, their forms anchored by the muted tones of the plain.

In the background, the horizon is marked by a soft, horizontal band of colour, suggesting the transition between the storm and the distant sky. The trees, rendered with sparse, skeletal branches, add to the desolate, windswept quality of the scene. Unlike the more dramatic compositions of his contemporaries, Eisen maintains a focus on the daily realities of travel. The print captures a specific moment of discomfort and perseverance, typical of the genre's interest in the intersection of human activity and the natural environment. The colour palette remains restrained, relying on soft blues, earthy browns, and muted greens to convey the damp, overcast atmosphere of the plain.