Seido and Kanda River From Shohei Bridge, No. 47 from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo

This is the first of three depictions of rain in the series, all belonging to the season of summer. Here Hiroshige represents the steady slanting sort of rain typical of the June "plum rain"—named for the fruit that appears then—a pleasant sea of dull skies and rich greens that the print perfectly captures. In the Kanda River boatmen protected by straw rain capes pole their loads of lumber, while the people on the hill and the birds in the sky all seem at ease bathed in the warm summer shower. The outer walls of Yushima Seidō Shrine, founded in the seventeenth century for the study of Confucianism, are pictured on the far slope.