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The cloud line echoing the form of the wave
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‘A View of Seven-League Beach’ by Shiba Kokan, 1796 —a likely source of inspiration to Hokusai
Hokusai’s View of Enoshima (1799)
Another print by Hokusai concerning the theme of a powerful wave: Oshiokuri hato tsūsen no zu, c. 1805
Cover of Claude Debussy’s ‘La mer’, 1905
Fine Wind, Clear Morning
Another influential design from Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, the subject for this memorable print is the majesty of Mount Fuji and nature alone. Unlike the other prints in the series, where nature features as the setting for human life, there is no reference in this image to man and his interaction with the outside world. Instead, we are encouraged to focus on the supremacy of the mountain, towering against a blue sky, laced with white clouds. Hokusai sets the season as late summer or early autumn, when Fuji is believed to give off a reddish hue at certain times of the day. At the summit the black cone is balanced with contrasting streaks of snow, balancing the tone of the composition. These white trails appear almost like aged wrinkles in the mountain’s surface, symbolising its ancient power.
The print is carefully structured into sections, providing a vibrant feast for the eyes as we are naturally directed to the top of the design in gradual stages. Emphasis is given to the darkest area of the print, interspersed with trees at the foot of Fuji. The reddish mass juxtaposed to the green section of the forest offers an appealing contrast of colours. The mountain itself seems to glow with its own heat, radiating a divine power over its subjects. The sky is filled with an intricate pattern of clouds, perhaps inspired by designs from Dutch copperplate engravings. This network of white forms provides the perfect counterpoint to the heat of the mountain’s core. The clouds to the left are soft and varied, contrasting with Fuji’s solid and symmetrical form on the right, once again providing balance to the striking composition.
Early impressions feature a particularly strong colouring, emphasising the dramatic presence of the mountain. The print is celebrated for its use of vivid colour variations, shading black to red and reddish-brown to green, depending on the direction that the viewer’s eye takes, rendering it a work of exceptional originality.
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An early impression of the design
A view of Mount Fuji today from Arakurayama Sengen Park
Clear Autumn Weather at Choko
In 1832 Hokusai was commissioned to produce a series of eight horizontal landscapes, commemorating the recent diplomatic mission made by the envoys of King Sho Iku of the Ryukyu Kingdom to Edo’s shogun Tokugawa Ienari. The Ryukyu Kingdom, which became Okinawa in 1879, is a cluster of islands to the southwest of the Japanese archipelago, which had paid tribute to China since the fourteenth century. However, following an invasion by the Satsuma domain in south-west Japan in 1609, the Kingdom had sent as many as 18 diplomatic missions to Edo. In effect, the Ryukyu Kingdom had become an important trade hub and was one of few foreign entities permitted to trade during the Tokugawa period; therefore this minor island nation served as an influential intermediary between Japan and other Asian nations.
The diplomatic mission of 1832 was a landmark event for the people of Japan, drawing vast crowds to witness the arrival of the envoys. Yet, Hokusai chose not to dramatise the spectacle of the mission for his series, but opted instead for a series of scenic views around the port of Naha, the seat of King Sho’s court. The eight designs are in essence adapted from the monochrome prints in the first volume of the Chinese woodblock book A Brief History of the Ryukyu Kingdom. Hokusai himself never travelled to the islands, but instead relied upon the text by Zhou Huang and the designs from the 1785 publication. This practice of copying from other prints was certainly not a rare occurrence at the time, as busy artists were frequently required to produce numerous prints with short deadlines, at a time when travel was slow and costly to finance.
Interest in foreign travel and distant places was on the rise and Hokusai was quick to exploit this commission to showcase his unique talents. Although the overall structure of Hokusai’s eight compositions adheres to the Chinese models, he presents them in his own stylistic approach, breathing new life into the monochrome originals. He makes his lines thinner, while simplifying the landscape elements and adding rich colour tones, which would not have been available to the original artist. He employs the Prussian Blue pigment to emphasise spatial depth, conveying three-dimensionality and modelled forms. In Clear Autumn Weather at Choko, Hokusai exaggerates the curve of the Choko bridge, giving it a more graceful appearance. He enlarges the trees, depicting them with greater naturalism, while introducing shading, giving a fuller body to the forms through the use of colour gradation. A pale orange mountain rises in the distance, adding an exotic mood. To produce a more engaging, human element, he includes a pair of boats in the bottom left, reprising his favourite theme of man and his relationship with nature. A solitary oarsman contemplates the beauty of the island scene, while two figures crossing the delicate bridge hint at the vulnerability of man.
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The location of Ryukyu Islands
Official royal portrait of King Sho Iku, painted by Mo Choki in 1852
One of the original illustrations from ‘A Brief History of the Ryukyu Kingdom’
The Amida Falls in the Far Reaches of the Kisokaido
Completed close to the time of Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, Hokusai’s A Tour of Waterfalls in Various Provinces contains eight vertical landscape designs of locations in Honshu, Japan’s main island. Regarded by many as the dwelling places of gods, waterfalls were popular destinations for pilgrimages and were a common feature of ukiyo-e artworks, widely admired for their ascetic and calming qualities. The eight designs form a unified series through the application of a distinct palette, depicting varying forms of cascading water in an ordered survey of the island’s waterfalls. They dominate the space of each print, dwarfing the scenes’ human figures. The waterfalls are rendered with a powerful sense of life, reflecting Hokusai’s animistic beliefs (the religious belief that objects, places and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence). Once again the outlines are printed in Prussian Blue, though in this series there is a marked tendency to synthesise the real-life subject matter with elements of the fantastical, conveying a magical impression.
For example, in The Amida Falls in the Far Reaches of the Kisokaido three travellers are about to drink tea on a grassy outcrop, overlooking the magnificent falls. The water appears to cascade from a round opening in the cliff and as it falls it produces the outline of an Amitabha celestial Buddha, conjuring a spiritual mood. The mesmeric swirl of water at the top and the straight white trails beneath it, contribute to the scene’s fantastical element.
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Another scene form the series: ‘Kirifuri Waterfall, Mt. Kurokami, Shimotsuke Province’
Kirifuri Waterfall today in autumn
Whaling off the Goto Islands
Published by Moriya Jihei between 1833 and 1834, the woodblock print series Oceans of Wisdom offers ten fishing-themed prints, including shellfish-gathering, whaling and fly-fishing. The series enabled Hokusai to explore one of his favourite themes, that of man expressing himself through labour, working in harmony with the forces of nature. This is particularly stressed in the print Choshi in Shimosa Province, portraying fishing boats struggling in a stormy sea, echoing his previous masterpiece The Great Wave off Kanagawa. The designs employ colour much differently than
often seen in contemporary prints, featuring richly overprinted shades and an unusual palette of yellow, green and varying red pigments. Hokusai also employs the rare technique of using black for colour and not just line, revealing the influence of Western oil painting.
One of the most famous prints from the series, Whaling off the Goto Islands depicts a collection of fishing boats surrounding a whale. Group hunting of whales had been developed in the seventeenth century. It was customary for watchmen to be positioned with telescopes as lookouts, portrayed by Hokusai in the upper right section of the composition. It was their role to identify the whales and signal to their waiting colleagues. The boats would then be manoeuvred to drive the whale into the nets, spread among the shallows, ready for the harpooners to descend. Hokusai has chosen to depict the scene at its most dramatic moment. The whale is readying itself, preparing to attack the surface of the water with its tail. Its steely eye looks imperiously forward, as it summons its strength, the elongated eyelet giving the animal a sinister appearance. The fleet of ships are gathering in unison and the net hovers below its prey, portrayed as a dark blue mass. The fate of the whale is left to us to decide…
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Another design in the series: ‘Choshi in the Simosa Province’
The Suspension Bridge on the Border of Hida and Etchu Provinces
Another series of scenic views that is notable for its range of beautiful designs is Unusual Views of Famous Bridges in Various Provinces, comprising eleven designs, first published in c. 1834. Once again Hokusai employs the convention of depicting a series of prints that each offer a different view of an individual theme or subject. In spite of the title of the series, the bridges selected by the artist could not be all truly designated as ‘famous bridges’, as he mostly opted for bridges outside Edo for his designs. The new series was most likely originally intended as a group of ten prints, though an additional design was later added to commemorate the completion of Tenpozan, an artificial hill constructed using earth dredged from the Ajigawa River at Osaka Bay. The subject of bridges, a transport from one place to an otherwise unattainable vantage point, was clearly important to Hokusai, as the structures feature regularly in his landscape prints.
In fact, Hokusai was so far relaxed in his selection of subjects that the bridge featured in the following print has still to be located with certainty. We do know, however, that The Suspension Bridge on the Border of Hida and Etchu Provinces is set in the present-day Gifu and Toyama prefectures – according to some, Japan’s most mountainous territory. The challenging countryside in this terrain, renowned for its long and harsh winters, led to its remaining an isolated place until more recent times. No doubt the romantic associations of such a remote locality were tempting for the artist, allowing him to add an exotic flavour of adventure to the series. The design presents an idyllic, perhaps artificial, view of a rickety suspension bridge, crossing a precipitous ravine. Two labourers are carrying loads of straw across the hazardous bridge. The steep ravines of the left section of the print emphasise the labours of the man and woman and the dangers they face. The first worker is dominated by the towering form of his load, as he strives forward, determined to gain the other side. The female labourer’s personality is defined differently. She pauses halfway across the bridge, taking a moment to contemplate the beauty of the scene, hinting at her more thoughtful nature. The mountain in the distance to the left echoes her stance, tuning in to the graceful impression. One of the grazing deer also looks across the valley, while numerous birds fly by in a picturesque group, suggesting that nature is in unison with the peaceful scene.
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The Ghost of Kohada Koheiji
The later series of prints One Hundred Ghost Stories once again reveals Hokusai’s penchant for the macabre. These designs were made in the chuban format, originally the preferred format of the printmakers from Osaka, depicting famous kabuki actors. Chuban ukiyo-e prints measure approximately 7.5 x 10 inches. The designs in this series would feature some of the artist’s most unusual and frightening images.
The kaidan genre of ghost stories had entered mass print culture after a publication of chilling tales in 1677, which was followed up by a host of similar anthologies, further popularised by theatre productions. One of the designs in One Hundred Ghost Stories is inspired by the partly true-life story of The Ghost of Kohada Koheiji, concerning an actor that was tortured and drowned by his wife and her lover. Fictionalised accounts of the infamous event led to numerous theatrical adaptations, where Koheiji returns from the dead to haunt his murderers. In the following print, Hokusai depicts the victim’s skull peering through a mosquito net, as he watches the murderous couple lying together in bed. His head tilts unnaturally forward, while his bloodshot eyes appear to roll in their sockets. The ghost has been presented as a skeletal form, emphasising the theme of death, as his elongated fingers claw the net down. The most sinister aspect of the print is the ghost’s leering grin, serving as an unsettling supernatural voyeur. Hokusai’s accurate detailing of the skeleton’s form and the intricate skull fissures hints that the artist may well have studied anatomical texts to aid him with the composition.
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Another sinister design from ‘One Hundred Ghost Stories’: ‘Laughing Demoness’
Another depiction of Kohada Koheiji by the artist Utagawa Kunitoshi (1847-1899)
Fuji over the Sea
From 1834 Hokusai adopted his last name, “Gakyo Rojin Manji” (The Old Man Mad About Art) and the first project he worked on after the change was the important landscape series One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji. In the postscript to the series, Hokusai wrote:
“From the age of six, I had a passion for copying the form of things and since the age of fifty I have published many drawings, yet of all, I drew by my seventieth year there is nothing worth taking into account. At seventy-three years I partly understood the structure of animals, birds, insects and fishes, and the life of grasses and plants. And so, at eighty-six I shall progress further; at ninety I shall even further penetrate their secret meaning, and by one hundred I shall perhaps truly have reached the level of the marvellous and divine. When I am one hundred and ten, each dot, each line will possess a life of its own.”
The series comprises three gracefully designed volumes, intended to benefit from the popularity of his landmark series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. Once again the designs follow the same concept, portraying the regal form of Mount Fuji from various viewpoints and at different times of the day and seasons. Nevertheless, there is a marked difference in terms of compositional scope, since the first series was printed in colour and in the large oban format, offering each print as an independent artwork, while this sequel series was designed in monochrome and printed in the small chuban format, encouraging readers to view the scenes as a linked sequence. Of course, the much reduced scale and absence of colour called for a high degree of skill and ingenuity from the artist to ensure its success.
The first two volumes were produced by 1835, while the third and final volume appeared in the mid-1840’s. We do know that the printing blocks of the first two volumes were carved by the master woodblock artisan Egawa Tomekichi, whose name is recorded on the page in recognition of his fine work. The series is notable for its subtle gradations of grey shading, where in early editions the grain of the cherry wood is clearly visible in some of the designs. Continuing the success of the first series, One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji enjoyed great popularity throughout the mid-nineteenth century and went into numerous reprints.
Masters of Art - Katsushika Hokusai Page 4
