Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi Bridge and Atake (Ōhashi Atake no yūdachi), from the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (Meisho Edo hyakkei)

Utagawa Hiroshige

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The heavens open. The sudden shower, a favorite subject of Edo haiku poets and ukiyo-e artists, is often depicted with a crisscrossing pattern of fine lines of rain—a difficult woodblock technique. Here, the netlike pattern is superimposed over an intensely focused image of Ōhashi (the Great Bridge), which crosses the Sumida River. Utagawa Hiroshige, one of Japan's foremost landscapists, designed two extremely popular series: Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō and One Hundred Famous Views of Edo.

Asian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met's collection of Asian art—more than 35,000 objects, ranging in date from the third millennium B.C. to the twenty-first century—is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world. Each of the many civilizations of Asia is represented by outstanding works, providing an unrivaled experience of the artistic traditions of nearly half the world.

Metropolitan Museum of Art