Hokusai: beyond the Great Wave (British Museum)

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In about the year 1812, Hokusai’s eldest son died. This tragedy was not only an emotional but also an economic event, for, as adopted heir to the affluent Nakajima family, the son had been instrumental in obtaining a generous stipend for Hokusai, so that he did not need to worry about the uncertainties of income from his paintings, designs, and illustrations, which at this period were paid for more with “gifts” than with set fees. Despite his appeals to heaven for “yet another decade—nay, even another five years,” on the 18th day of the fourth month of the Japanese calendar “the old man mad with painting,” as he called himself, breathed his last. He was 89 but still insatiably seeking for an ultimate truth in art—as he had written 15 years earlier:

Smith, Henry D. II (1988). Hokusai: One Hundred Views of Mt. Fuji. New York: George Braziller, Inc., Publishers. ISBN 978-0-8076-1195-1. Old Tiger in the Snow is one of Hokusai's last works and can be read as autobiographical, expressing Hokusai's feelings on his own age and the process of aging. The red seal in the lower right corner reads '100,' a detail which some critics have suggested could mean Hokusai was willing himself to live longer. The tiger, too, can be seen as a representation of the artist's energy and ambition, at an advanced age or as he moves into the afterlife. The tiger holds its head high and has a satisfied expression on its face as he moves forward with no sign of slowing down, suggesting contentment and fearlessness. Morse, Peter (1989). Hokusai: One Hundred Poets. George Braziller, New York. ISBN 978-0-8076-1213-2. This comparatively simple print is dominated by the cone of Mount Fuji, which reaches its apex toward the right side of the composition. The mountain is shown in the deep red that occurs only during the rare sunrise in late autumn when the weather is clear and the wind is southerly, as is alluded to in the title, Fine Wind, Clear Weather. The red, accented with traces of snow toward the top of the volcano, is balanced by the adjacent blue sky, streaked with clouds, while the base features both a wash of light green shaded by a forest of darker dots. The steep, triangular mass of the mountain is carefully balanced by the rounded horizontal clouds to the left, while the parting of these clouds around the summit gives it emphasis. Thompson, Sarah E. (2023). Hokusai: Inspiration and Influence (1sted.). Boston, MA: MFA Boston. p.112. ISBN 978-0-87846-890-4.

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Between 1804 and 1815 saw Hokusai collaborate with the popular novelist Takizawa Bakin on a series of illustrated books. Especially popular was the fantasy novel Chinsetsu Yumiharizuki ( Strange Tales of the Crescent Moon, 1807–1811) with Minamoto no Tametomo as the main character, and Hokusai gained fame with his creative and powerful illustrations, but the collaboration ended after

Hokusai clearly intended to create a book that basically enabled travels of the mind at a time when people in Japan could not travel abroad,” Frank Feltens, an assistant curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, tells Atlas Obscura. “It captures his incredible powers of creativity, fusing what he saw around himself but also what he had in his own imagination.” Screech, Timon (2012). "Hokusai's Lines of Sight". Mechademia. 7: 107. doi: 10.1353/mec.2012.0009. JSTOR 41601844. S2CID 119865798. As well as offering the unique chance to study Hokusai's masterful brushwork directly, the show shone a light on the last chapter of the artist's career and life, uncovering a restless talent that burned brightly into his final years. Kleiner, Fred S. and Christin J. Mamiya, (2009). Gardner's Art Through the Ages: Non-Western Perspectives, p. 115. Hokusai had a broad impact in his own lifetime and subsequently, with his influence spanning to the present day. Within Japan, his contributions moved Ukiyo-e from focusing on scenes of city life to landscapes and led to greater experimentation and change in approaches to perspective; Hokusai's approach was continued by Utagawa Hiroshige, who produced a direct homage to Hokusai's Fujimigahara in Owari Province, entitled Barrel-maker, Copied from a Picture by Old Master Katsushika, in 1836 and Kobayashi Kiyochika, who represented late nineteenth century industrialization through use of similar techniques. Hiroshige was influenced by Hokusai's practice of depicting the landscape in series, but differentiated himself through prints that were more loosely composed, with an emphasis on depicting nature as it appeared.This series became well-known and popular internationally. Its influence can be seen in France, where Henri Rivière, in 1902, created a series of prints directly based on Hokusai's Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji entitled Thirty-Six Views of the Eiffel Tower. Rivière borrowed Hokusai's ap-proach, drawing scenes from a range of vantage points, but replaced Japan's natural landmark with France's industrial symbol, then relatively new. More recently, Jeff Wall has reconfigured Hokusai's work in his photograph Sudden Gust of Wind (After Hokusai), which replaces the delicate cone of Mount Fuji with a flatter, dull landscape outside Vancouver. Hokusai illustrated more than 120 works, one of which, the Suiko-Gaden, consisted of ninety volumes; he collaborated on about thirty volumes: yellow books and popular books at first; eastern and western promenades, glimpses of famous places, practical manuals for decorators and artisans, a life of Sakyamuni, a conquest of Korea, tales, legends, novels, biographies of heroes and heroines and the thirty-six women poets and one hundred poets, with songbooks and multiple albums of birds, plants, patrons of new fashion, books on education, morals, anecdotes, and fantastic and natural sketches. Even after his death, exhibitions of his artworks continue to grow. In 2005, Tokyo National Museum held a Hokusai exhibition which had the largest number of visitors of any exhibit there that year. [46] Several paintings from the Tokyo exhibition were also exhibited in the United Kingdom. The British Museum held the first exhibition of Hokusai's later year artworks including 'The Great Wave' in 2017. [47]

From the age of five I have had a mania for sketching the forms of things. From about the age of 50 I produced a number of designs, yet of all I drew prior to the age of 70 there is truly nothing of any great note. At the age of 73 I finally apprehended something of the true quality of birds, animals, insects, fishes, and of the vital nature of grasses and trees. Therefore, at 80 I shall have made some progress, at 90 I shall have penetrated even further the deeper meaning of things, at 100 I shall have become truly marvelous, and at 110, each dot, each line shall surely possess a life of its own. I only beg that gentlemen of sufficiently long life take care to note the truth of my words. Legacy Price, Jonathan Reeve (2020). "Viewing Hokusai Viewing Mount Fuji". Communication Circle, Albuquerque, New Mexico. ISBN 978-0-9719954-7-5.Machotka, Ewa (2009). Visual Genesis of Japanese National Identity: Hokusai's Hyakunin Isshu. Peter Lang. ISBN 978-90-5201-482-1. Mark Williams and Danny Penman (2011). Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World, pp. 249, 250–251. The poem is also at Hokusai Says – Gratefulness.org. The name "Hokusai" (北斎 "North Studio"） is an abbreviation of "Hokushinsai" (北辰際 "North Star Studio"). In Nichiren Buddhism the North Star is revered as a deity known as Myōken. A True Mirror of Chinese and Japanese Poetry ( Shika shashin kyo), produced in about 1833 to 1834, was printed in extra-long vertical formats resembling the form of Chinese hand scrolls. Prints in this series include poems by Chinese and Japanese poets combined with scenes in those countries, and scenes from Noh plays (a form of dance theater predating kabuki). Ten designs in this series survive. [28] Katsushika Hokusai is among the most celebrated Japanese painters in the world. His print Under the Wave off Kanagawa, or The Great Wave (1830) is instantly recognizable. While Hokusai is primarily known today for his prints and paintings, like many ukiyo-e painters of his time, he also worked in other media such as book illustration. Here I focus on three of Hokusai’s illustrated books, Illustrated Book of Humorous Poems “Mountain on Mountain,” Hokusai Manga, and Picture Book on the Use of Coloring to showcase the broad range of Hokusai’s artistic creativity. The rise of the printed book