Praying for Rain Komachi (Amagoi Komachi)

Here poet Ono no Komachi has just recited a poem about rain, causing the heavens to open up. This is an example of a hashira-e (pillar print), which would have been displayed on one of the pillars of a traditional Japanese home. Ishikawa Toyonobu excelled in creating designs for this type of print at a time when the size and format had just become standardized. Additionally, this image is a benizuri-e, a print that has only two or three colors, including beni, a pinkish red. Works with this coloring were prominent before multicolored prints were developed in the 1760s. The poem written above the image reads:

Raindrops on the cover,
A protection against the frost for the narcissus blossom.

(Translation by Kenji Toda)