Rain was often shown as a series of black or gray lines representing swirling gusts, heavy downpours, or gentle drops. It is beautifully evoked in this print, in which the dark band of clouds seems to have opened up and released a torrent. These dark bands of color, often seen at the top of the sheet for a graded effect, were created with bokashi, a technique in which the printer hand-wiped pigment onto the block. The kyoka poem in the cartouche, upper left, reads, "Yielding to the sound in the evening rain / and drawing near to the evening wind, / he grows famous: / the pine tree of Karasaki."