119. View of the Paulownia Imperiales Trees at Akasaka on a Rainy Evening 1857

This print was made by Utagawa Hiroshige, who lived from 1797 to 1858. Hiroshige worked with the traditional Japanese technique of woodblock printing, or *ukiyo-e*. This was an elaborate process, involving not only the artist, who designed the image, but also highly skilled block carvers and printers. Look closely and you can see how Hiroshige’s design is realized through careful cutting and layering of colors. Rain is represented by a series of parallel lines, which were each individually incised on a woodblock. Areas of tone and color were carved out of separate blocks, inked, and then carefully pressed onto the paper in perfect registration. Because this was a commercial enterprise, thousands of impressions could be pulled from the blocks. Each one would have been sold at an affordable price. Hiroshige’s poetic image is thus revealed as the product of collective labor, made available to a broad public. Recognizing this helps us to understand the social world that this beautiful print inhabited.