Katsushika Hokusai

Katsushika Hokusai (葛飾北斎, 1760 – May 10, 1849) was a Japanese ukiyo-e? painter and printmaker of the Edo period, best known for the woodblock series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji and its most famous image, The Great Wave off Kanagawa. ¹²¹³ He was instrumental in broadening ukiyo-e from a style centered on courtesans and kabuki actors into one that embraced landscapes, plants, and animals. ¹⁵¹⁶ His work later exerted a strong influence on European painters during the wave of Japonisme in the late 19th century. ¹⁴¹⁵

Hokusai’s date of birth is usually given as the 23rd day of the 9th month of the 10th year of the Hōreki era, or about October 31, 1760, into an artisan family in the Katsushika district of Edo (now Tokyo). ¹³¹⁶ His childhood name was Tokitarō, and it is believed his father was the mirror-maker Nakajima Ise, who produced mirrors for the shogun and ornamented them with painted designs. ¹³¹⁹ He began drawing at the age of six. ¹⁸¹⁹

At about the age of 12 his father sent him to work in a bookshop and lending library, and at 14 or 15 he apprenticed to a wood-carver. ¹³¹⁵¹⁶ At 18 he entered the studio of Katsukawa Shunshō?, head of the Katsukawa school, an artist of ukiyo-e whose work centered on the courtesans and kabuki actors popular in Japan’s cities. ¹³¹⁵ A year later Shunshō renamed him Shunrō, and under that name he published his first prints, a series of kabuki-actor pictures issued in 1779. ¹³¹⁶ After Shunshō’s death in 1793, Hokusai was expelled from the school by a rival; he later credited the humiliation with driving the development of his artistic style. ¹³¹⁶

Names and career

Hokusai was known by at least thirty names during his lifetime — an unusually high number even by the standards of Japanese artists, who commonly changed names. ¹³ His name changes were so frequent, and so often tied to shifts in style and production, that they are used to divide his career into periods. ¹³ The principal names include Shunrō, Hokusai, Iitsu, Manji, and Gakyō Rōjin (“old man mad about painting”). ¹⁸ He took the name most closely associated with him around 1800. ¹⁹ The British Museum records that he moved house some 93 times over his life. ⁹

After leaving Shunshō’s studio, Hokusai studied at the rival Kanō school and examined European art, experimenting with landscapes and scenes of daily life. ¹⁶ Around 1797–98 he was introduced to Western principles of perspective and began signing his name in the European fashion, through the influence of the artist Shiba Kōkan?, who had close dealings with the Dutch. ¹⁹ The isolationist sakoku? policy of the Edo period limited exposure to foreign art but still let in materials such as the Prussian blue pigment Hokusai often used. ¹⁹

Much of his mid-career output was book illustration; he produced illustrations for nearly 270 books. ¹⁸ He was the most frequent collaborator of the gesaku author Kyokutei Bakin? (1767–1848), with whom he produced some thirteen works, including the hit Chinsetsu Yumiharizuki, before the pair fell out after roughly a decade. ⁹¹¹ From 1811 he issued a series of comic poem illustrations, and from around 1814 he began publishing the sketchbooks known as the Hokusai Manga?, thousands of studies of animals, plants, figures, and landscapes that later commentators have linked to the foundations of modern manga. ¹⁶¹⁹ He also produced teaching manuals (e-tehon) after turning toward instruction, and taught more than fifty students over his lifetime. ¹³¹⁹

Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji

Hokusai’s fame rests above all on Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (富嶽三十六景, Fugaku Sanjūroku-kei, c. 1831), a color-woodblock landscape series conceived both as a response to a domestic travel boom and out of a personal obsession with the mountain. ¹³¹⁴ Despite its title, the series comprises 46 prints, ten of them added after the original set proved popular. ¹⁴²⁰ Its best-known images are The Great Wave off Kanagawa — often titled Under the Wave off Kanagawa — and Fine Wind, Clear Morning (also called Red Fuji). ¹³¹⁸²⁰ The British Museum dates its impression of The Great Wave to 1831. ¹⁸

The historian Richard Lane concluded that if any one work made Hokusai’s name in Japan and abroad, it was this print series. ¹²¹³ The series was published late in his life, around the age of 72. ¹⁴ Mount Fuji, registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2013, has been an object of worship in Japan since ancient times. ¹⁴

Late work and Obuse

In his eighties Hokusai traveled to Obuse, in what is now Nagano Prefecture, at the invitation of Takai Kōzan, a wealthy farmer and merchant. ⁷ There he painted ceiling works for two festival floats — a dragon and a phoenix for the Higashimachi float, prepared over about half a year during his 1844 visit at the age of 85, and the “Masculine Wave” and “Feminine Wave” panels for the Kanmachi float, made over roughly three years from 1845. ⁷ He also painted a phoenix for the ceiling of the main hall at Gansho-in temple. ⁷ Both festival floats are designated official treasures of Nagano Prefecture. ⁷ The Hokusai Museum (Hokusai-kan) in Obuse, opened in November 1976, holds these works alongside paintings, printed books, and nishiki-e “brocade pictures.” ⁷

In his last decade Hokusai produced hundreds of ink drawings of the Chinese lion (shishi), one each morning over a year, as a talisman against illness and old age; over two hundred are believed to survive, mostly in the Nisshin joma (“Daily exorcisms”) album. ⁶ He worked to the end alongside his artist daughter Ei, also known as Ōi (c. 1800–1857), who became an artist in her own right. ⁸¹³¹⁸ He died on May 10, 1849. ¹²¹³ On his deathbed he is said to have asked for five more years of life in order to become a true painter. ¹³¹⁹

Influence and legacy

Hokusai’s estimated output runs to some 30,000 drawings, prints, sketches, and paintings, making him the most prolific artist of old Japan. ¹⁶¹⁹²¹ His work reached Europe as ukiyo-e prints circulated westward — reportedly even as wrapping paper around exported goods — and was widely seen after the 1867 Paris Exposition, helping fuel the movement known as Japonisme. ¹⁴¹⁵ Ukiyo-e’s dynamic composition, flattened perspective, and unusual color struck Western artists as an entirely new mode of picture-making. ¹⁴

His example influenced the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists; sources name Claude Monet?, Édouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir?, Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas?, and Vincent van Gogh? among those who absorbed Japanese compositional techniques after ukiyo-e was exhibited at the 1867 Exposition Universelle. ¹⁴¹⁵ The composer Claude Debussy? used a reproduction of The Great Wave on the cover of the 1905 Durand edition of his orchestral work La mer. ¹⁹

In 1998 the American magazine Life named Hokusai in its special issue “The 100 Most Important Events and People of the Past 1,000 Years,” the only Japanese person on the list. ¹⁴ His legacy is preserved in Japan at institutions including the Sumida Hokusai Museum, which opened in 2016 near his birthplace in Edo, and the Obuse Hokusai-kan. ⁷⁹