Evening Snow on Mt. Hira, from the series Eight Views of Lake Biwa

The Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers were a common theme of Chinese landscape painting. They were transposed into the repertory of Japanese art as the Eight Views of Omi, the province where most of the western shore of Lake Biwa rests. The Eight Views were a subject of Japanese painting long before they began to appear in woodblock prints; they became a common subject for prints in the late 1710s. By the end of the 18th century nearly every designer had designed sets of eight views, which were taken from the conventional views of Lake Biwa.