Nakabayashi Chikuto was one of the last major artists of the literati tradition in western Japan. He was much more strongly influenced by the orthodox literati painters of China than were the earlier Japanese Nanga (Southern) school painters, and in his treatises on painting he vociferously rejected the nativist tendencies of his predecessors.

This painting of a blossoming plum in the evening is inscribed as following the style of Yang Wujiu (1097-1169) of the Chinese Song dynasty, whose works on this theme were frequently used as source material by Japanese artists. The technique and size of the painting, however, seem to reflect much more closely the style of the Yuan dynasty master Wang Mian (d. 1359). The wide, dry brushstrokes that define the limbs and the broad, wet dots used as accent along the edges of branches, as well as the modulated outlines of the blossoms, all are quotes from works by Wang. In contrast to the elegance and restraint of Song dynasty plum paintings, Wang's plum, used as a symbol of resistance on the part of the scholar gentleman to subjugation by a foreign government in China, bears aged and broken branches and white blossoms that glow defiantly in the dark. Chikuto's adaptation of Wang's plum paintings carries this sense of resilience. This quality of forbearance was considered by Confucians to be of paramount importance in a gentleman of superior moral fiber.