With quiet compositions, subtle color schemes, playful textures, and an exquisite print formatting epitomizing 1930s bijin-ga, Hirano Hakuho was a nihonga and ukiyo-e style artist born in Kyoto in 1879. A highly obscure individual, virtually nothing is known of Hirano's personal or professional life. Throughout the 1930s, he produced a set of five bijin-ga prints published by Watanabe Shozaburo, including After a Bath (1932) and Before the Mirror (1932). 

As exemplified by Summer Rain (1936), Hirano preferred to display women facing away as they dried off or arranged their hair. Such works were subsequently featured at the Toledo Exhibitions of 1930 and 1936. Hirano passed away in 1957 at the age of seventy-eight.