The Floating World #1: The Japanese rainstorm Van Gogh copied

千里の道も一歩から

Senri no michi mo ippo kara

"Even a journey of a thousand ri begins with a single step."

A ri was the old Japanese unit of distance, about 4 kilometres. This is our first step, and I'm glad you're taking it with us.

Word of the Week: 浮世 (ukiyo)

The floating world. In Edo-period Japan it meant life lived for the moment: kabuki theatre, teahouses, festivals and fashion. The pictures of that world are ukiyo-e, and it's where this newsletter takes its name.

From the Studio

Welcome to the very first issue of The Floating World.

For years, @jpnstudio2023 has shared Japanese art with almost a million of you on Instagram and Facebook. I love that community. But a post gives an artwork a few seconds before the next one slides past, and the best prints deserve more than that.

So this is the slow version. Every Sunday, one masterpiece, the story behind it, and the small details you'd scroll right past. Plus a place where you can see Japanese art in real life, and, from next week, art made by one of you.

This newsletter will grow with you, so I'd love to hear from you. Hit reply and tell me: which artwork first made you fall in love with Japanese art? I read every message.

Bjorn

The Masterpiece: Hiroshige, Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi Bridge and Atake, 1857

At a glance: Utagawa Hiroshige (1797 to 1858) · 大はしあたけの夕立, Ōhashi Atake no yūdachi · 9th month of 1857 · colour woodblock print, about 36 x 23 cm · No. 58 of the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo

First look

Start at the top. A band of black cloud presses down on the sky. Then the rain: hundreds of fine lines slicing through the whole picture, so dense the far shore almost disappears. Below, a wooden bridge cuts across the scene at a steep angle, and on it, people run. Down on the grey-blue river, one man stands on a raft of logs, poling calmly through the downpour.

The story behind it

This is a yūdachi, the sudden summer shower that darkens the sky late in the day, pours down in heavy drops, and clears as quickly as it came. Anyone who lived in Edo, today's Tokyo, knew that feeling of being caught out.

The bridge is the Shin-Ōhashi, the "New Great Bridge" over the Sumida River. Atake is the far bank, an informal name that came from a huge shogunate warship once moored there. The ship was dismantled in 1682, yet 175 years later everyone still called the place by its name.

Hiroshige was around sixty when he made this print. One Hundred Famous Views of Edo was his last great series, a love letter to the city where he was born and worked. He died in 1858, before the series was complete.

Three details you might miss

1. The rain has two layers. Look closely and you'll see lines of black and grey printed at slightly different angles. That overlap makes the storm feel like it's moving, gusting across the page.
2. Count the people. There are six figures on the bridge, each fighting the rain differently: under umbrellas, straw mats and hats.
3. The raftsman doesn't care. While everyone on the bridge runs, the man on the river keeps working. There are two versions of this print. In what is believed to be the first printing, two more log rafts sit on the far shore. Later printings, like the one shown here, leave him alone in the storm.

Why it still matters

The Brooklyn Museum calls it the masterpiece of the series, and one painter agreed. In the autumn of 1887 in Paris, Vincent van Gogh painted his own version in oil: Bridge in the Rain (after Hiroshige). He made the colours more intense than the original. His canvas was a standard size, so to keep the print's tall proportions he left a border around it and filled it with Japanese characters copied from other prints.

Van Gogh never went to Japan. He found it in prints like this one. Today his copy belongs to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, a 170-year-old summer storm still travelling.

For members this week

On Friday, members set off on a journey. The first Members' Letter starts where every traveller on the Tōkaidō started: Nihonbashi, at dawn, as the gates swing open and a lord's procession steps onto the bridge. 54 stops to Kyoto. Want to come along?

Worth the Journey

Hokusai: Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji from the Iuchi Collection, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London | 20 October 2026 to 17 January 2027 | Adults from £21.50

This is the one we're most excited about this autumn. For the first time, UK visitors can see Hokusai's complete Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji: all 46 prints, made when the artist was in his seventies, plus rare variants in outstanding condition.

Two reasons to go:

• Hokusai’s most famous print. A beautifully preserved impression of the wave everyone knows.
• A rare Blue Fuji. A blue version of Clear Day with a Southern Breeze, normally printed in full colour.

We teamed up with Dulwich Picture Gallery for a collaboration post on Instagram and Facebook, The Man Who Mastered the Mountain, all about the exhibition. Haven't seen it yet? [Watch it on our Instagram]. And if you’re anywhere near London this winter, this is the exhibition to book.

Also on

• Tokyo: Hiroshige: New Perspectives on Edo Japan, Tokyo National Museum | Until 20 December 2026 | ¥1,500. The museum's first full-scale Hiroshige exhibition, built on a gift of 1,025 prints. The show changes in three rounds, and One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, the series our print comes from, is part of it.
• Turin: Dreamscapes, MAO Museum of Asian Art | Until 29 November 2026. Hiroshige's Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō, the same journey our members start on Friday.
• Amsterdam: Yayoi Kusama, Stedelijk Museum | Until 17 January 2027. A retrospective spanning seven decades of Kusama's work.

The Collector's Corner: Under the Hammer

Today's print is also one of the most expensive Hiroshige prints ever sold.

Freddie Mercury bought his copy of Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi Bridge and Atake at Sotheby's in 1977. When his collection was auctioned at Sotheby's London in September 2023, it sold to a phone bidder for £292,100, the record for a single Hiroshige print.

Last month, another impression came up at Christie's New York, in the first sale of the Alan Medaugh collection. It sold for $332,800, against an estimate of $50,000 to $100,000. All 181 prints in that sale found a buyer, for $6.99 million in total, and two more Medaugh sales are still to come.

The collector's lesson: the same image can sell for wildly different prices. What counts is how early the impression is, its colour and condition, and who owned it. Christie's catalogued its copy as a first printing, recognisable by two extra log rafts on the far shore. Later printings and modern reproductions of this design sell for a small fraction of these prices, which is exactly why knowing the difference matters.

All prices include the buyer's premium.

Spot the Detail

Which masterpiece is this from?

A small hint: it was printed almost 200 years ago, and you've probably seen it more often than you realise.

Think you know? Hit reply with your guess. The answer is in next week's issue.

Presented by The Floating World

Become a Founding Member

The Sunday issue will always be free. Founding Members help keep it that way, and get a short Members' Letter every Friday, a new wallpaper pack every month, a JPN Studio tote bag and a postcard pack once a year. Founding membership is only open at launch: €15 a month or €150 a year.

Community Gallery

This space is for your art.

From next week, every issue ends with one reader's work. Painting, prints, photography, ceramics, calligraphy, illustration: anything art related counts, and you don't need to be a professional.

Send in one piece, a few words about yourself, and what Japanese art inspires you. We'll pick one to feature and share it on Instagram too, with credit to you.

You can submit your art by directly replying to this email or a dm on instagram.

Before you go

Win a JPN Studio tote bag. This is our very first issue, so tell us what you think in the comments. Positive or negative, or something you'd love to see in the newsletter: we want to hear it all. We'll pick one comment at random to win a tote bag.

Know someone who'd love this? Forward this email to them, or send them to jpnstudio.com/newsletter. They'll get the wallpapers too.

See you next Sunday,
Bjorn
JPN Studio