Many of Oka Shikanosuke’s paintings were imaginary landscapes created in his atelier, but the inspiration for this snowy scene was quite different. In February, 1956, his physician, Yoneyama Yahei, brought him to the Shiga Highlands to visit the Hirao Daiichi Power Plant, a hydroelectric power plant still in operation today. Oka is said to have been surprised at how that landscape matched a scene he had imagined. By the time he showed the painting at an exhibition that May, however, he had devised many changes in the composition, including leveling the foreground, shifting the position of the iron water pipes, and adjusting the number of electric poles.