Initially rejecting traditional Japanese music and aesthetics due to reaction against the militarism that resulted in the country's ruin in World War II, Toru Takemitsu found ways in his music to evoke the spareness and serenity of Japanese art, decoration, and garden design. He was especially fond of gardens, particularly the effects of water and weather on the aspect of them. "Garden Rain," therefore, is a highly typical work of this sort.

Lasting about seven minutes, it is a work for a double brass quintet, written for the London-based group the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble. They are asked to play not only quietly (which in brass can be very effective and poetic) but with a soft articulation, the opposite of the usual definite attack. The resonances are supposed to float in, like the soft-edged appearance of a garden in the rain. Takemitsu points out that the different elements in a Japanese garden can be perceived as existing in contrasting time-scales: The stones and sand have never grown, but the stones are fixed while the sand shifts over time. Trees, grasses, and flower have their own different life-spans, the rain moves quickly, but also alters the play of light on the grasses. Takemitsu gives the different brass players different time cycles, overlapping and forming new chords as the individual parts shift. The general effect is soft and impressionistic, even using some of the harmonic practice of Debussy and his school.

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