Free to follow every thread. No paywall, no dead ends.
Hokusai: the story on HearLore | HearLore
Hokusai
Hokusai died on the 10th of May 1849, but his final words were not a eulogy for his life, but a desperate plea for more time to perfect his craft. On his deathbed, the eighty-eight-year-old artist reportedly exclaimed that if Heaven would grant him just another ten years, or even five more, he could finally become a real painter. This declaration encapsulates the relentless drive that defined a life spanning over seven decades of artistic production. Born Tokitarō in the Katsushika district of Edo, likely on the 31st of October 1760, he was the son of a mirror-maker for the shōgun, yet he never inherited his father's trade. Instead, he inherited a voracious curiosity that would lead him to change his name at least thirty times, a practice that far exceeded the norms of his contemporaries and served as a chronological map for his evolving artistic styles. His journey began in a bookshop and lending library at age twelve, where he was exposed to the woodcut books that were the popular entertainment of the middle and upper classes, before he was apprenticed to a woodcarver at fourteen and then to the famous ukiyo-e master Katsukawa Shunshō at eighteen. The early years were spent mastering the traditional subjects of the era, courtesans and kabuki actors, but the seeds of his future rebellion were already being sown.
The Embarrassment That Forged A Master
The catalyst for Hokusai's transformation from a competent portraitist into a revolutionary landscape painter was a moment of public humiliation. After a year in Shunshō's studio, he was expelled by Shunshō's chief disciple, Shunkō, possibly because Hokusai had begun studying the rival Kanō school and European copper engravings. This rejection became the fuel for his artistic fire, and he later stated that the embarrassment he suffered at Shunkō's hands was what really motivated the development of his unique style. He abandoned the safe haven of the Katsukawa school to become an independent artist, adopting the name Hokusai Tomisa in 1798 and eventually settling on Katsushika Hokusai, meaning North Studio, in honor of the North Star, a deity in his Nichiren Buddhist faith. This period marked a radical shift in subject matter, moving away from the floating world of courtesans and actors to capture the landscapes, plants, and animals of Japan. He began to attract students of his own, eventually teaching fifty pupils over the course of his life, and his fame grew not just from his artwork but from his talent for self-promotion. In 1804, during an Edo festival, he created an enormous portrait of the Buddhist prelate Daruma that measured 200 square meters, using a broom and buckets full of ink to draw the massive figure, a feat that drew huge crowds and cemented his reputation as a master of scale and spectacle.
When did Hokusai die and what were his final words?
Hokusai died on the 10th of May 1849, and his final words were a plea for more time to perfect his craft. He reportedly stated that if Heaven granted him another ten years or even five more, he could finally become a real painter.
Where was Hokusai born and what was his original name?
Hokusai was born Tokitarō in the Katsushika district of Edo, likely on the 31st of October 1760. He was the son of a mirror-maker for the shōgun but never inherited his father's trade.
What caused Hokusai to change his name multiple times during his career?
Hokusai changed his name at least thirty times to serve as a chronological map for his evolving artistic styles. This practice began after he was expelled from Shunshō's studio and decided to abandon the Katsukawa school to become an independent artist.
Which series of prints made Hokusai famous in the early 1830s?
Hokusai achieved the zenith of his fame with the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, which included The Great Wave off Kanagawa and Fine Wind, Clear Morning. The series proved so popular that ten more prints were later added to it.
How did Hokusai influence Western art history after his death?
Hokusai influenced Western art through the movement known as Japonisme, with his work reaching Europe around 1856. His woodcuts were collected by artists such as Degas, Gauguin, Klimt, and van Gogh, and his music inspired Claude Debussy to use The Great Wave on the cover of his tone poem La Mer.
Hokusai's ability to turn art into performance was legendary, exemplified by a bizarre competition he entered at the court of the shōgun Tokugawa Ienari. While another artist practiced traditional brushstroke painting, Hokusai painted a blue curve on paper and then chased a chicken whose feet had been dipped in red paint across the image. He described the resulting chaos to the shōgun as a landscape showing the Tatsuta River with red maple leaves floating in it, a trick that won him the competition. This same spirit of innovation drove his collaboration with the popular novelist Takizawa Bakin between 1804 and 1815, producing illustrated books like the fantasy novel Chinsetsu Yumiharizuki, which featured the main character Minamoto no Tametomo. The collaboration ended after thirteen works, likely due to discordant personalities and conflicting opinions on how to draw illustrations, but it showcased Hokusai's creative and powerful illustrative style. He also produced several albums of erotic art, known as shunga, with his most famous image being The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife, which depicts a young woman entwined sexually with a pair of octopuses. His attention to detail extended to the production process itself; he wrote letters to publishers and blockcutters like Egawa Tomekichi and Sugita Kinsuke, demanding that they adhere to his specific style for eyes and noses, rejecting the Utagawa school style that had crept into the final prints. In 1811, at the age of fifty-one, he changed his name to Taito and entered a period defined by the creation of the Hokusai Manga, a series of art manuals that began in 1812 and became an immediate success, eventually comprising twelve volumes with thousands of drawings of objects, plants, animals, and religious figures.
The Great Wave And The Western Eye
The early 1830s marked the zenith of Hokusai's fame with the production of his most celebrated work, the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. This series included The Great Wave off Kanagawa and Fine Wind, Clear Morning, which secured his reputation both in Japan and overseas. The Great Wave is a testament to his perspectival studies, utilizing what would have been seen as a western perspective to represent depth and volume, a technique he had experimented with in his Manga. The series proved so popular that ten more prints were later added to it, and he produced other popular series such as A Tour of the Waterfalls of the Provinces and Oceans of Wisdom. However, his career was not without its trials. In 1839, a fire destroyed his studio and much of his work, and by this time, his career was beginning to fade as younger artists like Andō Hiroshige became increasingly popular. At the age of eighty-three, Hokusai traveled to Obuse in Shinano Province at the invitation of a wealthy farmer named Takai Kozan, where he stayed for several years. During this time, he created masterpieces including the Masculine Wave and the Feminine Wave, and between 1842 and 1843, he painted Chinese lions every morning in ink on paper as a talisman against misfortune, a practice he described as daily exorcisms. He continued working almost until the end, painting The Dragon of Smoke Escaping from Mt Fuji and Tiger in the Snow in early 1849, proving that his creative fire burned as brightly in his final years as it had in his youth.
The Island In The Floating World
Hokusai's influence extended far beyond the borders of Japan, reshaping the course of Western art history through the movement known as Japonisme. The first samples of his work to reach Europe were seen in Paris around 1856, when the French printmaker Félix Bracquemond discovered a copy of a Hokusai sketchbook at the workshop of his printer, August Dalatre. This discovery led Bracquemond to design the Rousseau Service, an elegant set of dinnerware featuring images of birds and fish copied from Hokusai's book illustrations and placed asymmetrically against a white background, a look that was considered very modern at the time. The influence spread to the Impressionism movement, with themes echoing Hokusai's work appearing in the art of Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, as well as to Art Nouveau in Germany. His woodcuts were collected by many European artists, including Degas, Gauguin, Klimt, and van Gogh. The French composer Claude Debussy was so inspired by The Great Wave that he requested it be used on the cover of his tone poem La Mer, which debuted in 1905, and the music itself incorporated Japanese-inflected harmonies. Degas famously declared that Hokusai was not just one artist among others in the Floating World, but an island, a continent, a whole world in himself. Even after his death, exhibitions of his artworks continue to grow, with the Tokyo National Museum holding a major exhibition in 2005 that drew the largest number of visitors of any exhibit there that year, and the British Museum holding the first exhibition of his later year artworks in 2017.
The Ghost Who Tread Lightly
Hokusai's final years were marked by a relentless pursuit of perfection and a deep spiritual connection to his art. In 1834, he began working under the name Gakyō Rōjin Manji, meaning The Old Man Mad About Art, and produced One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji, a series generally considered the masterpiece among his landscape picture books. He also created A True Mirror of Chinese and Japanese Poetry, printed in extra-long vertical formats resembling Chinese hand scrolls, which combined poems by Chinese and Japanese poets with scenes from Noh plays. His final print series, One Hundred Poems Explained by a Nurse, was never published in full, perhaps due to financial hardships faced by his publishers during Japan's economic downturn in the mid-1830s. Despite the fire that destroyed his studio and the rise of younger competitors, he traveled to Obuse to create new masterpieces and painted Chinese lions every morning as a talisman against misfortune. His final works, The Dragon of Smoke Escaping from Mt Fuji and Tiger in the Snow, were painted in early 1849, just months before his death. He was buried at the Seikyō-ji temple in Tokyo, and a haiku he composed shortly before his death reads: Though as a ghost, I shall lightly tread, the summer fields. His legacy continues to inspire modern culture, from the Hugo Award-winning short story 24 Views of Mt. Fuji, by Hokusai by Roger Zelazny, to a 2011 book on mindfulness that closes with a poem about Hokusai, and a biographical film released in Japan in 2021. His youngest daughter, Ei, also known as Oi, became an artist and his assistant, and her story has been told in her own manga and film, Miss Hokusai, ensuring that the spirit of the old man mad about art lives on.