After Rain

O_shima Island, in Sagami Bay, is about sixty miles south of Tokyo. In the Edo period (1603–1868), the Tokugawa shogunate sent convicts into exile on O_shima. The epicenter of the Great Kanto_ Earthquake of September 1, 1923, was deep beneath this island. Publication of The Twelve Views of O_shima Island began in 1937, marking the end of sixteen years during which Shinsui designed no landscape prints. His return to this genre must have been successful, since there are at least two editions of this series. He continued to design landscape prints for Watanabe well after World War II.